For ScotBookFlood publishers reveal what Scottish books they’ll be gifting this Christmas. By choosing one from their own publishing house and one from elsewhere, there’s lots of insight and inspiration here for the book lovers in your life. Join in on social media with our hashtag and tell us what books you plan to gift to family and friends (or maybe as an end-of-year treat to yourself). We’d love to hear from you!
Andrew MacKinnon from Acair is buying…
The first book which I plan on gifting this year will be Sly Cooking – Forradh, by artist Catrìona Black. This is a great wee pocket book featuring little-known Gaelic words, accompanied by fun original linocut illustrations, created by the artist. I plan on giving this book to my mum, who loves learning new Gaelic words that she’s never come across before, even though she has been a fluent speaker all her life!
The second book I plan on gifting this year is Hings by Chris McQueer. This fun, witty new book has been widely praised since its release, and would make a great gift for someone with a sense of humour! My brother is a keen follower of Chris on Twitter, and I know he would love reading more of his quick wit and funny observations.
Jonny Gallant from Alban Books is buying…
My father just moved to Edinburgh, setting up home in a top floor tenement in Bruntsfield with spectacular views. Looking out over the city it’s wonderful to pick out landmarks and piece together a map of the Old Town from the living room. I’ll be giving him a copy of Edinburgh: Mapping the City by Chris Fleet and Daniel MacCannell. Dad (and I) will get great enjoyment learning more about his new city as we gaze over it with mugs of coffee and glasses of wine.
My best friend, Kieran, is a musician and song-writer and I know of no-one else who revels more in the English language. A few years ago, I gave him Ron Ferguson’s excellent biography of George Mackay Brown, but I really should have given him Letters from Hamnavoe. Dipping into this book, just for a couple of minutes, rewards the reader with exquisite turns of phrase, imagery and reflection. It’s a treasure of a book that has stayed with me since I first read it over a decade ago; I think of Mackay Brown and springtime every time my knife goes into butter.
Duncan Jones from ASLS is buying…
A Kist o Skinklan Things, like all the best anthologies, is full of variety – a wonderful gift-box of twentieth-century Scots poems, a mixter-maxter of comedy and tragedy, of love, despair, triumph, rage, beauty, hope, life, and death. Demonstrating the huge poetic range and power of the Scots language, this is an absolute gem of a collection.
James Kelman’s Dirt Road is an extraordinary novel. All Kelman’s novels are extraordinary, of course, but Dirt Road stands out for the virtuoso high-wire act that is Murdo’s stream of consciousness, which we inhabit throughout the book, and for Kelman’s effortless narrative control and deep human sympathy.
Freya Barcroft from Barrington Stoke is buying…
This year I was absolutely blown away by Martin MacInnes’ debut novel Infinite Ground. Though completely lacking in any festive flair, this engrossing journey of a novel is definitely one to be sampled at any time of the year. Pulling on the strings of detective tropes, Martin’s writing goes far beyond the confines of any genre to become a unique and rather unnerving read. It’s definitely one for those ‘I’ve read it all’ readers and I’ll be gifting it to my wonderful mum who’s a more voracious reader than I’ll ever be!
And from our selection of shiny new titles, I’ll be gifting to my little cousin who’s just stepping into the brilliant world of YA, the hilarious and heartbreaking The Last Days of Archie Maxwell by Annabel Pitcher. It’s definitely a book for teen readers searching out more hard-hitting subjects and it is so tightly written and plotted that it’s a wonderfully easy read. Archie’s voice is so real and engaging that I found it impossible not to read in one sitting and I’m sure my cousin will quite happily curl up with his story on a lazy boxing day.
Kirstin Lamb from Barrington Stoke is buying…
It’s an unashamedly biased purchase, but I will be gifting our newly-published I Killed Father Christmas by Anthony McGowan and Chris Riddell. Apart from the obvious festive link, this little book makes a great Christmas gift with a funny, joyful storyline all about the true meaning of Christmas, and with magical illustrations by Chris Riddell – what more could you ask for? I’ll be buying it for my little cousin who has just started to read on his own but will still let me curl up and read with him – the perfect book for sharing with a little one over the holidays!
Elsewhere I’ve already picked up Ian Buxton’s brand new Whiskies Galore: A Tour of Scotland’s Island Distilleries which will be perfect for my dad this Christmas – he’s been a big fan of Ian’s writing since 101 Gins to Try Before You Die and this one will, I suspect, go down even better. (And there’s a small chance he may even discover a distillery he hasn’t yet visited himself!)
Jamie Norman from Canongate Books is buying…
For my father, Alistair Moffat’s The Hidden Ways – an exploration of the history of Scotland’s forgotten roads, it’s a rich and fascinating study of the land, told through the paths Alistair has walked. Something to hopefully rouse dad from the sofa on Christmas day and set him out walking!
For my friend Nicki, I’m paying close attention to the upcoming The Goldblum Variations collection by Helen McClory – as she can quote any of his lines at the drop of a hat, I think this’ll be perfect, plus the concept is hilarious.
Jen Wallace from Canongate Books is buying…
This Christmas, I will be gifting The Hidden Ways by Alistair Moffat to my brother. He loves walking and the outdoors and this book is such a wonderful celebration of Scotland’s natural and social history that I know it will be the perfect gift for him, and hopefully inspire him to do a bit of exploring of his own.
I’ll also be buying a copy of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman for my mum. I thought it was really heartwarming and made me feel all warm and fuzzy which is the perfect kind of book for snuggling up with over the Christmas holidays.
Anne Glennie from Cranachan Publishing is buying…
This year I’m putting a copy of This Bonny Baby by Kasia Matyjaszek and Michelle Sloan in my nephew Cameron’s stocking. He’s only two, but he loves books and listening to stories. This cute board book will be a winner because it has a mirror inside and gorgeous illustrations of babies making a mess – another one of his favourite past-times!
My cousin Heather has been raving about the recent TV adaptation of Queen Victoria’s life, so I’m hoping she’ll be delighted to receive a signed copy of Punch by Barbara Henderson. Set in Victorian Scotland, runaway Phin finds new friends on the road, including an escaped prisoner and a dancing bear. With a bracing, pacy plot which includes the famous Punch and Judy, Queen Victoria, and even a Victorian Christmas celebration – this is sure to be a festive favourite!
Jayne Baldwin from Curly Tale Books is buying…
How could I not recommend this new title as our children’s publishing company and shop sits right next to Shaun’s extraordinary emporium that has grown over the years into Scotland’s largest second hand bookshop? The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell is as quixotic and quirky as its author and his business based in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Booktown. The diary format makes it extremely readable and funny combining his jaded views on demanding customers whilst dealing with an eccentric selection of seasonal staff. I’m planning to give copies to several friends and family members so that they hopefully realise that there is more to bookselling than sitting behind a desk drinking coffee and reading! Shaun’s diary reveals the emotional baggage of bookselling including the complications of what may lie in much loved collections left to family to dispose of when the owner dies. And then there’s the day to day difficulty of just trying to make a living out of what many imagine to be their dream job. Surprisingly frank this book has heart in between the hard covers.
Nip Nebs by Susi Briggs, with illustrations by Ruthie Redden, is a beautiful book about winter frost will be hot off the press at the beginning of December. Nip Nebs is the Scots name for Jack Frost and the charming story is suitable for young children but the illustrations by artist Ruthie Redden mean that it has appeal for all ages. The book is in Scots but the language is evocative and lyrical and can be appreciated by non Scots speakers though there is a translation into English as well. I’ll be buying copies for children in the family, but know that their parents and grandparents will love the pictures as Nip Nebs weaves his magic across a winter landscape.
Karyn McMurray from Floris Books is buying…
When Wine Tastes Best is a genius wee book that tells you when wine is at its most delicious. It’s slim, handbag-sized and you can carry it anywhere – perfect for those emergencies when you have to ask yourself, ‘Is this a good day to drink wine?’ I will be gifting this to my best friend this Christmas.
Pretty Monsters is one of my favourite books of all time. This collection of Kelly Link short stories will definitely be going in someone’s stocking: the trouble is deciding which lucky person’s life to make infinitely weirder, funnier and more magical. The only solution is to gift multiple copies…
Eleanor Collins from Floris Books is buying…
I have a lot of 9-12 year olds in my life right now, and that means I’m giving away numerous copies of Lari Don’s wonderful Spellchasers trilogy. It’s gripping, friendly, full of magical adventure and happens to be set on enchanting Speyside. Recommended for Christmas and birthdays.
It wouldn’t be Christmas for my children without the latest Matt Haig Christmas book: Father Christmas and Me, which follows the beguiling A Boy Called Christmas and The Girl Who Saved Christmas. The Chris Mould illustrations are so full of character: stocking-filler gold.
Chani McBain from Floris Books is buying…
I’ll be giving this fun book, Ally Bally Bee illustrated by Kathryn Selbert, to my daughter this Christmas. She’s 2 and loves lifting flaps to discover what’s underneath and the rhyme is a favourite in our house).
A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh will make an ideal present for my mother-in-law who likes nothing better than to lose herself in the history and architecture of a beautiful city.
Leah McDowell from Floris Books is buying…
Full of fun details and bright colours, I know my niece will love The Super Scotland Sticker Book by Susana Gurrea! Especially because it contains lots of places and animals that she sees every day in Scotland.
Surely the festive season is the perfect time to learn the art of over-indulging… As a self-confessed hedonist, I’ll be buying a copy of The Art Of Losing Control: A Philosopher’s Search for Ecstatic Experience by Jules Evans for myself, as well as a few friends and relatives who are also particularly skilled in this area!
Sarah Webster from Floris Books is buying…
Every year at Christmas-time I’m poised and ready to unleash my inner Art Attack (a staple in the TV diet of many 90s kids). A Swedish Christmas: Simple Scandinavian Crafts, Recipes and Decorations by Caroline Wendt allows me to do just that. Packed with creative inspiration from creating your own Christmas crackers and wreaths to recipes for giant gingerbread crowns, this book will fully satisfy my crafting ambitions this festive season.
My sister loves crime thrillers, so I intend to introduce her to some of Scotland’s finest tartan noir with the new Bloody Scotland anthology by various authors. A fantastic taster of so many leading crime writers, it’s exciting and intriguing to find out how they’ve grafted their new crime stories onto some of Scotland’s most fascinating buildings and structures.
CJ Cook from Floris Books is buying…
ALL of my friends will be receiving copies of Chris McQueer’s Hings, from queens of the publishing scene 404 Ink. I don’t think a book has ever made me laugh so much (or made me question my curry choices), and I want to share the joy.
I’ll be sending a copy of Porridge the Tartan Cat and the Unfair Funfair by Alan Dapre to my 9-year-old cat-mad goddaughter. As she’s half-Scottish, I love to remind her of her roots by sharing Scottish books with her. She’s adored the Porridge the Tartan Cat series so far, so I know she’ll be so excited to read his latest cat-lamity!
Shelagh Campbell from Gaelic Books Council is buying…
Le Mùirn/With Affection by Catriona Murray is a very special book which documents the friendship between the renowned ‘Melbost bard’, Murdo MacFarlane and the equally renowned Gaelic singer, Margaret MacLeod of Na h-Òganaich. The book, which is bilingual, includes a number of classic songs which came from this historic collaboration as well as letters, photos, manuscripts and stunning original artworks produced specially for this project. It would make a perfect gift for anyone interested in contemporary Gaelic music.
I’m going to send Mil san Tì? by Seonag Monk by to a friend in Canada who’s learning Gaelic. The story is gripping and often hilarious, the characters are wickedly witty and true to life and I couldn’t put it down. As a Gaelic learner myself, this was one of the first books that I read from page to page without consulting a dictionary!
Laura Waddell from HarperCollins is buying…
This Christmas one of our standout books at Collins is the Explorer’s Atlas, created by Polish illustrators Piotr Wilkowiecki and Michal Gaszynski. It’s an atlas for the incurably curious, for those ready to fall down a rabbithole of the weird and wonderful, as it filled with oddities and tidbits of information. It’s also sumptuously designed, with a palette of forest greens, rich mauves and burgundy against cream and gold. It doesn’t even need to be wrapped with a bow. I guarantee that if you gift this to someone, you will later find them poring over it.
From elsewhere, I can think of many people who should read Rebecca Solnit’s The Mother of All Questions, and the violently chartreuse and navy cover makes it a striking gift, too. I always feel like I can breathe more easily after reading Solnit. I was recently at the Literature Alliance Scotland Literary Cabaret and two speakers quoted her in their review of the past year. The thoughtfulness, clarity and compassion with which she writes on topics of the day feels like a steady, guiding hand through an uncertain world.
James Crawford from Historic Environment Scotland is buying…
Photo by
Paul Reich
Everyone really should know that books are the best presents. It’s what I give – and receive – almost exclusively each year. Every book is your own personal Tardis – little cuboids of paper and words that can contain whole worlds. Whereas socks can only contain your feet…
This year I’ll be giving Bloody Scotland to my father. He’s an avid reader of crime fiction, but primarily concentrates on the big American authors. Which means he needs to be introduced to the incredible crop of current Scottish talent. What better than a book of crime shorts – inspired by Scotland’s iconic buildings – to showcase 12 of the nation’s best crime writers? Featuring the likes of Denise Mina, Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnstone and Louise Welsh, this is the ideal primer to lead him to a whole raft of new and backlist titles…
For my brother I’m going to get Geoff Dyer’s White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World. I’ve followed Geoff Dyer’s genre-hopping writing for years now, and find him one of the most interesting and unusual essayists out there. All the same, he is an acquired taste and one I’ve been reluctant to share as a result. So my brother will be a test case! The essays in White Sands offer the perfect encapsulation of Dyer’s amused misanthropy, and his meandering and languorous attempts to explore the most fundamental questions about our existence. To paraphrase the title of one of his previous books, this is existentialism for those who can’t be bothered to do it
Christine Wilson from Historic Environment Scotland is buying…
I will definitely be giving Who Built Scotland: A History of the Nation in Twenty-Five Buildings by Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford to my dad this year (although I’m sure my mum will borrow it pretty quickly). He is a real history enthusiast, and I know he has read books by some of the authors before, like Alexander McCall Smith and Kathleen Jamie. My parents live in Glasgow, so I think they will especially enjoy the chapters on Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow Cathedral.
I recently finished re-reading Under the Skin by Michel Faber, which is just amazing. I’ll be giving a copy to my sister this Christmas – she has seen the film, but not read the book. Canongate reissued it as part of the Canons series earlier this year with a beautiful new cover, so it has to be that edition! I might even throw in a copy of The Book of Strange New Things as a bonus gift.
Healey Blair from Muddy Pearl is buying…
Most of us will know someone who loves Christmas – not just loves, but LOVES it. That person for me is my friend Nicola, who loves Christmas so much that one year she nearly ended up in A&E after she got so excited she began to hyperventilate. In order to keep her calm this year, I’ll be gifting her a thoughtful little book that she can read the whole way through the Advent period. Adventure by Mark Greene is a beautiful book of poems and reflections on the wonder and mystery of the Christmas story, perfectly capturing the magic that can be found in the story of Jesus.
My sister is an art student with a brilliant imagination, who loves to invent worlds not unlike our own where blobs of paint and pencil marks are life forms with unique thoughts and personalities. Even after reading just the first few pages of The Humans from Matt Haig, I knew this story of a man replaced by an alien who struggles to understand the human world would be exactly the kind of book a woman who loves to create fantastical realities would enjoy. This insightful and hilarious look at the beauty to be found in messy humanity will be a great read for my sister over the Christmas holidays (and a very welcome break from university reading!)
Taran Baker from Sandstone Press is buying…
Skye the Puffling by Lynne Rickards is going to be one of my Christmas gifts for my adorable 1 year old niece Millie Skye, who shares a name with the wonderful ball of feathers that is Skye the Puffling. She is already obsessed with books, opening and closing them is her favourite part but were now getting to a point where she listening to someone read to her and what could be better than one of Lynne Rickard’s masterpieces.
I’m planning to get my dad the whole William Wisting Series because he loves Scandi Crime, and Jorn Lier Horst’s police procedurals will be just the thing to keep him distracted this Christmas (so Mum and I can watch Strictly in peace). Of course there’s lots in the series to choose from but I’ve gone with When It Grows Dark as it’s the prequel to the first book Dregs and will get him started.
Kay Farrell from Sandstone Press is buying…
My Dad is a big reader of non-fiction, particularly history with a Scottish connection. He especially loves to have new anecdotes to wheel out at social events around Christmas. The Great Horizon by Jo Woolf is perfect for him: it combines stories of some of the world’s most famous adventurers with stories of lesser-known explorers and scientists, mostly Scottish. While there’s a real mix of inspiring stories – my favourite is the indomitable Freya Stark – I think Dad will like the crusty Speirs-Bruce best. He can identify with a man who thought there was no good reason Scotland shouldn’t launch its own Antarctic expedition!
In I Killed Father Christmas! by Anthony McGowan, a boy kills Father Christmas by asking for too many gifts, then proceeds to make amends by putting on his mum’s old red coat and playing Santa himself. I’ve got several children-of-friends to buy for and I can foresee more than one getting this book, especially since Barrington Stoke’s books are dyslexia-friendly. Great story with themes around the consequences of selfishness and taking responsibility, and the illustrations are adorable. I love the robot!
Sue Foot from Sandstone Press is buying…
I’m going to give a friend The Whisky Dictionary by Iain Hector Ross for Christmas. It’s a lovely little book full of whisky terminology and quirky drawings. Just the thing for my friend to cosy up with by the fire and enjoy a glass of whisky.
My second book is How To Stop Time by Matt Haig for my daughter’s birthday. She’s studying abroad and had to leave most of her books at home. With exams looming I think she would definitely like to stop time!
Robbie Guillory from Saraband Books is buying…
Plump stockings rule above all other Christmas traditions in my family, so foraging for the perfect fillers to squeeze in besides the chocolate coins and obligatory potato can take all year. My partner’s stocking is going to have a few hard corners in it, because I’m slipping in the first of Contraband’s Pocket Crime collection, The Paper Cell, a gripping literary thriller by Louise Hutcheson that will be perfect for curling up with beside the fire.
My oldest and best friend lives at the other end of the country, so when we do meet it generally requires feasting. To that end, I’m getting him the beautiful Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat this Christmas, and look forward to the culinary delights to be had in the new year.
Sara Hunt from Saraband Books is buying…
My cousin will be unwrapping a copy of The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet this Christmas (many of my family and friends are already reading it!) The sheer pleasure of reading Graeme’s novels is due in large part to his outstanding ability to create characters so real, so alive, that you fear, hope, seethe, cringe, lust, laugh and loathe alongside them. Add to that his mischievous wit, understated style, evocative atmosphere, some clever literary flourishes and a detective story. Brilliant!
For another family member who’s currently living abroad, I’ll be sending new illustrated title Who Built Scotland, in which a variety of contributors describe aspects of Scotland’s built (and sometimes natural) landscape. It’s a book for browsers, who will doubtless begin with their own favourite place or author and go on to discover new ones. Apart from my relative’s professional and personal interest in the subject, it’s an effective way of reminding her, ‘Haste ye back.’
Jean Findlay from Scotland Street Press is buying…
I love the word Jolabokaflod – onomatopoeic, it brings to mind a jolly flood of books. For this Christmas book flood, I would give Errant Blood by CF Peterson to my husband because it is a thrilling page-turner set in a Highland winter where the landscape and the weather are almost another character in themselves.
To my father, Peter Findlay, sadly no longer with us, though he is in spirit, I would give Alan Cameron’s Cinico – because it gives the outsider’s view of the Scottish Referendum campaign from a seasoned European. Born a francophone, my father was a witty cynic himself, but this sat with a passionate and uncynical belief in an independent future.
Maria Carter from Swan and Horn is buying…
My elder daughter and her husband are trying for a baby in the New Year. Competent people though they are, they lead incredibly busy lives, so I will be gifting them some treasure in the form of Small Steps to Great Parenting: For Busy Families, by Kalanit Ben-Ari, which packs a lot of punch into a small volume, bursting with realistic, relevant and practical tips based on the best child-development research but without reams of hyperbole!
For my younger daughter, it will be Luke William’s Echo Chamber – she loved the magic realism of Salman Rushdie and Günter Grass, so will thoroughly enjoy the unique literary style of this author and his unique story spanning Nigeria and Scotland, two very significant countries in her own family history.
Sue Steven from Whittles Publishing is buying…
Running South America, with my Husband and other animals by Katharine Lowrie will be perfect for one of my daughters who is a keen runner and has a lot of friends who go running regularly, doing 5Ks and 10Ks. Even in the dark evenings they still go running in the woods but with headtorches on! I know she’ll enjoy Katharine’s amazing story plus reading about all the huge variety of wildlife will make it a book to remember, I’m sure.
Tiddler Sticker Activity Book by Julia Donaldson will be ideal for my two grandsons, aged 2.5 and 5, who absolutely love stickers and I hope they’ll be able to share the book as one will be able to do the the games and puzzles with a little help and of course the stickers will be great for them both. Who knows where the stickers will appear, apart from in the book?!
Eloise Hendy from Vagabond Voices is buying…
There seems to be a slightly unfortunate tradition in my family of giving my mum quite emotionally heavy books for Christmas… Last year my dad outdid himself and gave her Grief Is A Thing With Feathers by Max Porter, leading to tears before turkey. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot may at points appear to continue in this tradition – it concerns alcoholism and isolation in pretty hefty doses – but I found the process of reading it utterly joyous. Liptrot’s book is stuffed full with curiosity, and it’s examination of Orkney’s wild environment is breathtaking. As an aspirational wild swimmer herself, who has recently moved across the country to a new, more rural environment, I know my mum would relish diving into this book. It may sting at first, but you emerge refreshed.
The last book I remember my dad really urging me to read was His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet. He still has it on his bedside table almost two years after finishing it. So what could be better for a fan of history, mystery and the hint of true crime than another story set in Scotland’s murky past? While His Bloody Project conjures a convincing history of a young murderer, Doubting Thomas, by Heather Richardson, follows a genuine criminal – or is he the victim? Focusing on Thomas Aikenhead, the last person to be executed in Britain for blasphemy, this novel is a gripping examination of ethics, medicine and religion in 17th Century Edinburgh. I think it will easily grab my dad from the opening scene’s grisly autopsy onwards.
Check out our Pinterest board for a visual snapshot of all the books chosen here.
Join in on social media with our #ScotBookFlood hashtag and @scottishbooks and tell us what books you plan to gift to family and friends (or maybe as an end-of-year treat to yourself). We’d love to hear from you!
If you enjoyed this then you might like this article of Scottish publisher’s summer reading recommendations.
In the wake of publication of gripping debut novel Doubting Thomas, Vagabond Voices’ immersive digital project, In The Freethinker’s Footsteps, enables readers to experience a taste of Edinburgh’s murky past. In this article the publishers take us behind-the-scenes of this innovative project.
Walking around Edinburgh’s Old Town, it is sometimes easy to feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. The closes and wynds snaking off the Royal Mile can seem like portals; their dark passageways and evocative names pulling you into a gothic past (Fleshmarket Close is a personal favourite). But what would it have really been like to stroll the streets in the 17th Century, when religious doubt could get you locked in the Old Tolbooth?
‘The figure explained: being a dissection of the womb…’. Wood engraving showing woman dissected to expose child in womb.
From The Compleat Midwife’s Companion: Or the Art of Midwifery Improv’d, by Jane Sharp (1724).
With Vagabond Voices’ immersive digital project, In The Freethinker’s Footsteps, you can experience a taste of Edinburgh’s murky past. Using an interactive map of the city, you can uncover soundbites, historical trivia, and stories of sex, drugs and religious outrage at every turn. The project has grown out of Heather Richardson’s novel, Doubting Thomas, which inspired by the fascinating true story of Thomas Aikenhead, the last person to be executed in Britain for blasphemy. Told through four different viewpoints, over a span of fifteen years, the book is intimate but wide-ranging; it not only probes into religious conflict, but also offers insight into 17th Century medicine, law and sexuality. Opening with a grisly autopsy of a pregnant prisoner, the novel is saturated with suspicions of the body and its desires, as well as affairs of the soul.
Vagabond Voices’ digital project stretches the story beyond the bounds of the printed book, to explore the notable people, places and items found in Heather Richardson’s well-researched novel. The interactive map of Thomas’s Edinburgh is not only accompanied by audio clips and quotes, but by a five-episode podcast series exploring different elements of the book. In the first episode – available now online – Stewart Ennis reads Thomas Aikenhead’s final words, written shortly before his execution in 1697. Upcoming episodes will feature discussions with Heather Richardson, Dr Michael Graham (The Blasphemies of Thomas Aikenhead), and Dr Catriona MacLeod, an expert on women in 17th Century Scotland. If it was no longer common to execute people for blasphemy in the late 1600s, what doomed Thomas to such a harsh punishment? What would a woman’s experience have been like at this time?
Author of Doubting Thomas, Heather Richardson.
The 17th Century in Scotland throws up a host of questions, riven as it was by religious and political discord. Censorship was rife, with many books branded dangerous for public consumption. Doubting Thomas references many banned texts – the ones that led to Thomas’s arrests for “freethinking”. These are also available as part of In the Freethinker’s Footsteps, under the guise of the Freethinkers’ Library. If you wonder which ideas would have thrown you in jail next to Thomas, you can poke your nose into a clutch of licentious and strange texts, from Christianity Not Mysterious, to the very pamphlet that may have sent Thomas to his death: his classmate Mungo Craig’s A Satyr Against Atheistical Deism: An Account of Mr. Aikenhead.
It might not be possible to walk down a wynd and emerge blinking in 17th Century sunlight, but with In the Freethinker’s Footsteps you can get a couple of steps closer.
You can find In the Freethinker’s Footsteps here. Doubting Thomas by Heather Richardson was published by Vagabond Voices on 26th October 2017 priced £11.95. You can read an exclusive article from Heather, ‘Politics, Potions and Pamphlets in 17th Century Edinburgh’, here on Books from Scotland.
In the Freethinker’s Footsteps was made possible thanks to Publishing Scotland’s Go-Digital Fund.
James Hogg, also known as The Ettrick Shepherd, is remembered today as the author of the unsettling novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. To his contemporaries, though, he was better known for his poems and for his stories – especially his supernatural tales – which often drew upon Scottish folk beliefs. David Robb introduces Hogg and his work here, and you can also read an extract from Hogg’s dark doppelganger tale Strange Letter of a Lunatic.
Extracts from The Devil I Am Sure: Three Stories by James Hogg
By James Hogg
Published by ASLS
Introduction
By David Robb
James Hogg, “The Ettrick Shepherd” (1770–1835), was a prominent member of the literary world of Walter Scott’s Edinburgh. A shepherd indeed, he was born into a farming family at Ettrick, south-west of Selkirk. His mother, Margaret Laidlaw, a noted tradition-bearer, provided ballad material for Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Hogg himself was drawn to literature while still a teenager and wrote poems and plays for local entertainment. He began, however, to have poems printed in periodicals and in 1801 he published his first collection, Scottish Pastorals.
At first, his reputation was as a poet, although he also published on sheep-farming. In 1810 he moved to Edinburgh with a view to making a literary career and started his own weekly periodical, The Spy, which ran for a year. It was his long poem The Queen’s Wake which, in 1813, cemented his reputation. However, it was his involvement in the newly launched Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1817 which turned him into a star: he was at the heart of its boldly scurrilous and innovative journalism and became the principal attraction (as a fictionalised character) of its long-running series of the Blackwood’s group’s supposed table-talk, the Noctes Ambrosianae.
He continued to write poems and songs, and tales which drew on the history, legends and fairy beliefs of the Scottish Borders. In 1818 he published a full-length novel, The Brownie of Bodsbeck, encouraged (as were others) by the fashionable enthusiasm for Scottish fiction sparked by Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels. In 1822 he published an even more innovative work, steeped in his Romantic vision of Border history and legends, The Three Perils of Man, which was followed a year later by The Three Perils of Women. In 1824 there appeared an equally ingenious and original novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This is now regarded as his masterpiece. Always a kenspeckle personality in the circles around Scott and Blackwood’s, he created one of the most distinctive bodies of work, in poetry and prose, of the Scottish nineteenth century.
And in the nineteenth century, it was probably for his tales and poems, rather than his novels, that he was remembered best. In the wake of the modern enthusiasm for The Justified Sinner, however, his stories, with the rest of his substantial output, have had to be rediscovered and reclaimed as achievements in their own right. As regards the three reprinted here, “The Brownie of the Black Haggs” and “Mary Burnet” appeared in Blackwood’s in 1828, and “Strange Letter of a Lunatic” was published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1830.
His most characteristic fictions, which certainly include these three tales as well as the novels mentioned above, are usually compounded of several types of source material and narrative interest. In other words, they combine, in varying degrees, stories of the supernatural, stories which draw particularly on the folk beliefs of the Scottish countryside (familiar to Hogg, surely, from his mother’s tales in particular) and stories which reflect a prominent awareness on Hogg’s part of the quirks and possibilities of human psychology. Sometimes, too, they seem to foreshadow the murder mysteries which have become such standard popular reading for more recent generations. The “mix” of these elements inevitably varies from story to story, and this is what makes each of his tales, at their best, stand apart: the reader notes the features which are constantly present in his writing, but finds that Hogg is by no means a formulaic writer and that each of his best tales feels like a fresh inspiration, while being clearly his and no one else’s.
The pleasure for the reader, then, is double and, in a way, contradictory (things being “double” are entirely characteristic of Hogg, in all sorts of ways, as anyone who reads a number of his works can easily ascertain). Thus, the reader experiences, at one and the same time, the escapist pleasure of reading a tale of wonder (a supernatural tale, or a modernised folktale of the fairy people and their doings) and also the pleasing challenge of what we might call a tale-to-be-made-sense-of – in other words, a tale in which we feel challenged to work out what “really” happened. Hogg makes sure that we never succeed. To this end, he is a master of narrative framing: his tales usually rely on the creation of doubt as to what even the narrator can “know” and reliably tell us, either because the narrator is recounting material from a distant past derived from the oral tradition (that great domain of fascinating but unreliable stories), or because the narrator is inherently untrustworthy.
“The Brownie of the Black Haggs” features, obviously, that folk-tale supernatural creature, the household “brownie”, though there is surely room for doubt (again, a constant device of Hogg’s) as to whether Merodach – despite his weird name – is anything other than a very peculiar-looking mortal. As we get into the tale, however, the interest shifts from Merodach to the psychology of the always out-of-control Lady Wheelhope, and the tale is shaped by the destructive spiral of the relationship between the two.
The shape of “Mary Burnet”, on the other hand, is episodic and chainlike: it gives us a sequence of three mysteries, and while we can begin to make sense of it in terms of the possible experiences of real people (at one level, it is a tale of attempted seduction, of disastrous sexual obsession and of a child lost through marriage into a higher social sphere), its principle appeal derives from the fairy-tale quality which pervades it.
As for “Strange Letter of a Lunatic”, the supernatural hints of the opening pages take second place to the psychological puzzle which emerges. In it, Hogg draws less upon the folk heritage of his Scottish background than he does upon the Romantic motif of the doppelgänger. At which point, all readers of The Justified Sinner feel on familiar ground.
Extract from Strange Letter of a Lunatic
By James Hogg
Strange Letter of a Lunatic by James Hogg – has only been published twice before: once in Fraser’s Magazine in 1830; and once by ASLS, in James Hogg: Selected Stories and Sketches, edited by Douglas S. Mack, in 1982.
to mr james hogg, of mount benger
Sir;—As you seem to have been born for the purpose of collecting all the whimsical and romantic stories of this country, I have taken the fancy of sending you an account of a most painful and unaccountable one that happened to myself, and at the same time leave you at liberty to make what use of it you please. An explanation of the circumstances from you would give me great satisfaction.
Last summer in June, I happened to be in Edinburgh, and walking very early on the Castle Hill one morning, I perceived a strange looking figure of an old man watching all my motions, as if anxious to introduce himself to me, yet still kept at the same distance. I beckoned him, on which he came waddling briskly up, and taking an elegant gold snuff-box, set with jewels, from his pocket, he offered me a pinch. I accepted of it most readily, and then without speaking a word, he took his box again, thrust it into his pocket, and went away chuckling and laughing in perfect ecstasy. He was even so overjoyed, that, in hobbling down the platform, he would leap from the ground, clap his hands on his loins, and laugh immoderately.
“The devil I am sure is in that body,” said I to myself, “What does he mean? Let me see. I wish I may be well enough! I feel very queer since I took that snuff of his.” I stood there I do not know how long, like one who had been knocked on the head, until I thought I saw the body peering at me from a shady place in the rock. I hasted to him; but on going up, I found myself standing there. Yes, sir, myself. My own likeness in every respect. I was turned to a rigid statue at once, but the unaccountable being went down the hill convulsed with laughter.
I felt very uncomfortable all that day, and at night having adjourned from the theatre with a party to a celebrated tavern well known to you, judge of my astonishment when I saw another me sitting at the other end of the table. I was struck speechless, and began to watch this unaccountable fellow’s motions, and perceived that he was doing the same with regard to me. A gentleman on his left hand, asked his name, that he might drink to their better acquaintance. “Beatman, sir,” said the other: “James Beatman, younger, of Drumloning, at your service; one who will never fail a friend at a cheerful glass.”
“I deny the premises, principle and proposition,” cried I, springing up and smiting the table with my closed hand. “James Beatman, younger, of Drumloning, you cannot be. I am he. I am the right James Beatman, and I appeal to the parish registers, to witnesses innumerable, to———”
“Stop, stop, my dear fellow,” cried he, “this is no place to settle a matter of such moment as that. I suppose all present are quite satisfied with regard to the premises; let us therefore drop the subject, if you please.”
“O yes, yes, drop the dispute!” resounded from every part of the table. No more was said about this strange coincidence; but I remarked, that no one present knew the gentleman, excepting those who took him for me. I heard them addressing him often regarding my family and affairs, and I really thought the fellow answered as sensibly and as much to the point as I could have done for my life, and began seriously to doubt which of us was the right James Beatman.
Strange Letter of a Lunatic by James Hogg – has only been published twice before: once in Fraser’s Magazine in 1830; and once by ASLS, in James Hogg: Selected Stories and Sketches, edited by Douglas S. Mack, in 1982.
The Devil I Am Sure: Three Short Stories By James Hogg, introduced by David Robb, is out now published by ASLS. You can view, and download, the PDF for free here.
404 Ink’s third book heralds collaboration with rock band Creeper this November, to accompany the Theatre of Fear tour which heads across the UK in December. The Last Days of James Scythe dives headfirst into the band’s music, and an eerie world not wholly our own, by exploring The Stranger, Callous Heart, and more. Books from Scotland spoke to illustrator and designer David Ransom about being part of this ambitious project.
How did working with Creeper come about and what kind of work have you done with them prior to The Last Days of James Scythe?
I’ve known three of the band members Will, Ian and Dan for years now having all come up in the music scene in Southampton so we’ve all played shows and hung out together. Through that we soon discovered we were all equally as nerdy about the same things, so it was really great to start working on projects together with them. The first thing I did for them was design a poster for their Southampton show in March. We did a run of 100 hand-screened prints and auctioned a signed one off for charity, so that was a really cool thing to start with. I then produced the ‘Inside Room 309’ Misery screening at the University here in Southampton which, again, I made some screened posters for and “themed” the event. Will and I spend a lot of time coming up with ideas and projects to work on which is obviously really great as a Graphic Designer, I get to do some really cool things that I wouldn’t normally get to do.
For those unaware, who is James Scythe and why should we be interested in his last days?
James Scythe was an officer for The Ombudsman of the Preternatural, who are a branch of the Government who investigate the weird and wonderful things in the UK. Toward the end of 2015 James was sent to Southampton to investigate a story of a dark apparition that has been sighted many times in the city. Unfortunately, disaster struck during his investigation and his life was changed forever.
What has been your role on the book? What has been your favourite part working on it?
My role in the book has been primarily as a designer. There have been lots of artefacts of James’ life that we’ve needed to create and expand, to make him a real, three dimensional part of the world. But as well as that I worked closely with Ian and Will, as well as 404 Ink, to write and flesh out James’ back story; who he is, where he’s from and what really happened to him.
The Last Days of James Scythe comes out in a month – how do you feel about your first book credit?
Extremely excited! Terrified, but extremely excited. I always want to be busy, so it’s great to have a big project like this to get my teeth into. I can’t express how grateful I am to the guys in Creeper and 404 Ink for letting me work on this. I spent the last 10 years working as a photographer and I’ve only been working as a Graphic Designer for a few years now, so I’m really lucky to be able to do this kind of work so early on.
Any recommended Halloween reads for the road?
What’s great about working as a Designer is I can listen to audiobooks all day! I always have something on my bedside table to physically read, but it also means I can churn through a lot of books during the day. Like most people right now I’ve got Stephen Kings’ IT lined up and ready to go, but Phillip Pullmans’ Book of Dust has just come out so Pennywise will have to wait! In terms of Halloween themes, The Rivers of London books are fantastic, but I’m too much of a wuss to read anything actually scary.
The Last Days of James Scythe: A Report for the Ombudsman of the Preternatural can be preordered for £20. You can catch 404 and Creeper at the Theatre of Fear tour on the following dates:
Dec 3: Glasgow
Dec 4: Birmingham
Dec 5: Bristol
Dec 7: London
Dec 9: Manchester
Dec 10: Southampton
If you relished reading about Mildred Hubble’s magical moments in The Worst Witch, then you’ll love meeting Ruby McCracken in this fun brand new book. Pre-teen witch Ruby is forced to move to the ordinary world and give up spells, Hex factor and her broomstick. Tragic! Here we introduce Ruby via her Guide to the Ordinary – or ‘Ord’ – world, where many of our everyday customs are absolutely baffling to Hexadonians like Ruby.
Extract from Ruby McCracken: Tragic Without Magic
By Elizabeth Ezra
Published by Floris Books
Ruby McCracken: Tragic Without Magic by Elizabeth Ezra is out now published by Floris Books priced £6.99. Find out more about how the book’s fantastic cover design came about through the Kelpies Design and Illustration Prize in this article also on Books from Scotland.
Elizabeth Ezra was born in California, has lived in New York and Paris, and now lives with her family in Edinburgh. She teaches at the University of Stirling and writes children’s books in her spare time. In 2016 she won the Kelpies Prize for new Scottish writing for children.
In Supernatural Scotland children can discover many weird and wonderful stories, from beasts and brownies, to selkies and storm witches. This extract on ghosts and graveyards introduces supernatural spirits including an undead sailor in Sutherland and the Ghost of Culloden moor.
Extract from Supernatural Scotland
Part of the Scotties series for children
By Eileen Dunlop
Published by NMS Publishing
Ghosts and Graveyards
Since the beginning of time, people have believed that the spirits of the dead haunt places where they lived. Every country in the world has its own ghost stories.
In Scotland, the belief flourished in the ill-lit streets of the towns and cities, and the lonely glens and hills, where it was easy to imagine on a dark winter night that a ghost might be flitting behind you. Ghosts did not appear simply to frighten people – sometimes they came to right a wrong done in life, like stealing money or cheating a relative out of a title or property. Sometimes they were murderers who had been denied Christian burial and could not rest in their lonely graves.
Naturally ghosts were associated with graveyards, and memorial stones were carved with skulls and other symbols of death. It was believed that although spirits were allowed to haunt by night, they must return to their coffins when the cock crowed at dawn.
The weeping tombstone. In the churchyard of Inchnadamph in Sutherland is a vault, unused since the early 20th century, which holds the bodies of the MacLeod chiefs of Assynt. On one of the flat tombstones there is a spot of damp about ten centimetres across, which never dries out – even in spells of hot weather. The roof is in good repair, the ground is not waterlogged, and no other stone shows any sign of damp. Local tradition claims that before a major catastrophe, such as a war, the moisture turns to blood.
Ghost of Culloden. Culloden Moor, Scotland’s saddest battlefield, is haunted by a tall Highlander with a pale, tired face. He whispers ‘defeated’ to all those he meets.
The undead sailor. Three hundred years ago, a Polish ship was wrecked at Sandwood Bay in Sutherland. Many sailors drowned. It is said that the ghost of one of them often knocks at the door of a certain cottage. Anyone foolish enough to open the door sees a horrifying sight – a headless man outlined against the grey, stormy sea.
Eileen Dunlop has written over 20 novels and works of non-fiction for children, including Saints of Scotland in the Scotties series. Scotties are exciting, full-colour, Scottish information books for young readers, for children living in Scotland or for visitors. Each title has 40 full-colour pages plus an eight-page black/white facts and puzzle section (photocopiable for classroom use), and contains a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities, websites, and suggestions for places to visit.
Supernatural Scotland by Eileen Dunlop is out now published by NMS Publishing. In it you can find out about:
- Ghosts and Graveyards – including the Undead Sailor, and the Weeping Tombstone
- Haunted Houses – such as Haddington House with its ghostly horse
- Witches – for example, Morag the Storm Witch who sold good winds to sailors for sixpence
- Halloween – guising, and Mischief Night (as Halloween was called in the Hebrides)
- Fairies – fallen angels, household helpers, changelings, and more
- Glaistigs and Brownies – a glaistig is a thin woman with a face like ‘a grey stone overgrown with lichen’
- Merfolk – from golden-haired mermaids to the Blue Men of the Minch
- Beasts Great and Small – like The Fairy Dog. The fairy dog (Gaelic: Cù Sith) had a dark green coat. He was kept as a watchdog in the fairy hills and feared by all humans…
Queen of Teen, Juno Dawson, and prize-winning illustrator, Alex T Smith collaborate in this chilling tale of love, death, black magic and what follows when they all come together. A contemporary take on the Gothic genre, Grave Matter’s stylistic tone, in both prose and illustration, provides a perfect primer for Halloween’s ghostly goings-on, as this chilling opening demonstrates.
Extract from Grave Matter
By Juno Dawson
Published by Barrington Stoke
Chapter One
There is still snow on the ground when they lower her into it. The same snow, I suppose, as the night she died.
I’m drunk. Everything is fuzzy at the edges. My eyelids are sore and swollen, my blinking sluggish. A vodka filter. The snowy graveyard swims in and out of focus. If I squint, grey stick-men cluster around her grave.
All is black and white, with only the lilacs atop her coffin for colour. They were her favourite.
*
Don’t let me go.
I won’t.
She gripped my hand. Pale fingers, ebony nails.
Please, Samuel…
I promise I won’t. I won’t let you go.
Her grip went slack.
*
My father is sombre, professional, as stiff as his vicar’s collar. It is his job to be solemn, but I wonder if today he means it. I think he must – everyone who met Eliza loved her.
“In the Name of God,” my father begins, “the merciful Father, we commit the body of our daughter and friend Eliza Grey to the peace of the grave.”
Mrs Grey is wailing, burying her face into the lapel of Mr Grey’s coat. Her pained cries – animal somehow – soar and swoop through the naked winter trees, shaking crows from the branches. Tears stream down her chin. No one knows what to do to comfort her. Other mourners politely pretend her grief isn’t happening, they shift from foot to foot, unsure of what to do with their hands.
My limbs feel too long and limp, like over-done spaghetti.
The coffin is lowered into the earth. At the flick of a switch, the device cranks and wheezes to life and the coffin descends. It seems too small by far to contain Eliza. It’s all wrong. To box her is grotesque, like caging a hummingbird.
*
Are you OK to drive in this weather?
Of course, it’s not that bad.
I don’t know, Sam, that snow is pretty seriously snowy.
It’ll be fine, it’s not even settling. Promise. We’ll be home in ten.
*
Every time I close my eyes I see that moment play on a loop. Eliza looked out of the bay window at Fish’s house, watching feathery flakes swirl under the street lights. That was the fork in the road. We could have spent the night at Fish’s.
But we didn’t. We took the other prong. I made her.
Father stands where the headstone will be. He goes on and on.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. May the Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her and be gracious unto her, the Lord lift up his face upon her and give her everlasting peace. Amen.”
Amen.
My father throws the first dirt on top of Eliza’s coffin. We must all play our part in burying her. The mud rains down on the lilacs, spoiling them. Next, Mr Grey steps forward, Mrs Grey still under his arm. He too throws dirt over his daughter.
It’s all too much. We can’t … we can’t smother Eliza like this. How … how will she breathe down there? She doesn’t belong in the dark and cold. She was scared of the dark.
I fall to my knees. I feel icy slush seep into my trousers. “No!” I cry, and I reach for Eliza’s coffin far below. I scramble to the edge of the grave. “No, you can’t! Eliza!”
Burly hands grab my arms and drag me away. I kick and struggle but strangers hold me back. Mrs Grey wails anew. Father looks so disappointed.
***
Mother’s hand unfurls and I see that a tiny, pale blue pill rests in her palm. “Here,” she says. “Take this. You’ll feel better.”
Her lips are taut, her eyes stern. She – Dr Beauvoir – knows best.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Just take it, Samuel. You need to rest. You haven’t slept since the crash. I hear you pacing around.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Just. Take. It.”
Reluctant – because I worry I’ll be stuck in the nightmare – I swallow the pill. Mother grips my face to check under my tongue. “Good boy. Now, I’d better get over to the Wake.”
“I should be there.”
“After your performance at the graveyard? I don’t think so. Sleep. We’ll be back to check on you in a few hours, but your father needs to be there.”
She helps me out of my black blazer and I pull off my tie. My curtains – thick crimson velvet like all the others in our house, the rectory – are shut. They block out every drop of crisp winter light. “Now, lie down.”
I do as I’m told and she pulls the patchwork quilt up over me. “Mum…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t … I don’t know what to do without her … I can’t live without –”
“Samuel, don’t even say it.” Mum perches on the edge of my bed and her pine green eyes soften. The same eyes as mine. Eliza told me she loved my weird eyes. “I’ve seen this a million times,” Mum goes on. “Don’t tell your dad I took His name in vain, but oh God, the grief will hurt like hell but it won’t last for long. I promise. Every day it’ll get better as you forget –”
“I don’t want to forget her!”
She strokes my hair. It’s short, a number-two shave all over, and her touch comforts me. It somehow reminds me of being a child. “That’s not what I meant,” Mother says. “You won’t forget Eliza, you’ll forget the pain. Eliza wouldn’t want to see you like this and you know it.”
I feel the sleeping pill start to take effect. My head feel like it’s full of black water that’s sloshing around my skull. I say nothing.
“Now sleep.” Mother leans in and kisses my forehead. “Sweet dreams.” She switches off the lamp and I don’t even notice the darkness any more.
Grave Matter by Juno Dawson, with illustrations by Alex T Smith, is out now published by Barrington Stoke priced £7.99.
Vampire horror and a serial killer’s story fuse with police procedural in this arresting new debut novel by Andy Davidson. Deep in the sun-baked Texas desert a man becomes a monster – a vampire, by any other name. This tale of Travis Stillwell and his violent transformation will chill you to the core…
Extract from In the Valley of the Sun
By Andy Davidson
Published by Saraband
Travis watched the sky. The sun was soaking through like blood through a garment and soon it would stain everything. He looked all around, up and down the highway, across the fields of tarbrush and yucca and mesquite. The valley a flat bald between the mountains. Nowhere to go, he thought. He had lain awake all night listening to his insides make sounds like the timbers of a new house shifting. You are not dying, the Rue-thing had whispered, her final words before she faded, before the weight of her against his back had lightened, then vanished. You are already dead.
“Hello,” the woman said from behind him.
She stood several feet away, having come on cat’s feet, dressed in a blue bathrobe and holding an orange mug of coffee. The mug was Fireking, a brand he remembered from when he was a boy.
“Pretty, ain’t it,” the woman said of the sky, which was the color of a ripe smashed plum. “How are you?”
“Better,” he lied.
“You look like a man with leaving on his mind.”
He made no answer.
“Where will you go?”
He looked toward that part of the world still dark. “Reckon I’ll keep west.”
She was silent, as if there were something she wanted to say but didn’t know how. The silence stretched between them, and the wind blew across the plains. They could hear, faintly, the sound of a truck shifting up through its gears far away.
Finally, she came out with, “There’s a lot more to be done around here. Tom couldn’t do much after he got sick.” She paused, searching for more words, but they weren’t there, so she drank a swallow of coffee.
Travis looked at her. The wind blew her robe against the shape of her. She was pretty, he thought, but she was thin. He felt a restlessness in his breast, a feeling for which he had no words, a thing he had not felt for a woman in a very long time. It scared him, so he looked away, back to the dawn.
“What got him?” he asked.
“Cancer.”
Travis nodded.
The woman reached into the pocket of her robe and took out a folded bill and held it out. “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’ll get you a ways.”
He did not take it.
“Please,” she said.
He made no move to take her money. Only kept looking west, toward the night. A few lingering stars.
She held the bill a handful of seconds more, then put it back in her pocket. “I don’t mean to insult you,” she said.
“It’s no insult,” he said.
Another silence, and then she spoke, and the words sounded to Travis like the words of a woman who had seen great hardship. They were measured, slow, and flat. “After I knocked on your door this past Sunday,” the woman said, “I got baptized. They call it asking Jesus into your heart. To me it feels like he just walked in of his own accord.” She drank another swallow of coffee.
Travis thought, strangely, of a man named Carson, a man he had not thought of in years. A man who had set whole jungles to blaze with the torch he had carried on his back. There had not been any good men there, no, not one.
“I was never baptized,” he said. “Maybe now I wish I had been.”
“‘Come to me, ye who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I shall give you hookup,’” the woman said with a smile. “And meals at the cafe,” she added, “some pay every week. If you wanted to stay.”
“Meals,” he said. He hunkered down and picked at the rocks among his boots, sifting through the alkali, cupping the bone-chips of some small animal. After a moment, he stood and tossed them, dusting his hands. A centipede crawled among the stones and disappeared into the scrub-grass. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said to her.
“I reckon I do,” she said.
After that, she went on her way and left him alone.
Travis watched, helpless, as the sun welled up out of the east and bathed the plains and arroyos and dry creeks in its terrible light. He saw in that flood of gold his own black fate, and he knew that nothing good or purposeful would ever take root in him again.
In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson is published on October 31 by Saraband priced £8.99.
New Edinburgh-based publisher Charco Press specialise in translating South American authors into English. This eerie, meditative novel by Richard Romero, narrated by a shy young boy who seems to be very good at lying about the truth, echoes the tradition of sinister rooms in literature such as Dr Jekyll’s laboratory.
Extract from The President’s Room
By Ricardo Romero
Translated by Charlotte Coombe
Published by Charco Press
The house isn’t big, but it’s not small either compared to the rest of the houses on the block. It has two floors, three if you count the attic, a storage room up on the roof terrace where nobody goes apart from me. The rest of the family call it the loft, but I prefer to call it the attic. I didn’t decide this on a whim. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, up there in the attic, among the old furniture, the trunks, and always the same warmish air capturing the rays of sun as they filter through the skylight and the frosted glass of the door. Rays of sun, skylight, frosted glass. When I’m there, I’m able to think ‘I’m in the attic’, but I find it impossible to think ‘I’m in the loft’. Not everything can be thought. Why should everything have to be thinkable?
On the first floor of the house are the bedrooms. My parents’ room, my older brother’s room and the one I share with my younger brother. There are two large bathrooms that seem much older than the rest of the house, as if they’ve always been there, floating at the height of the first floor, waiting for my family to come and build the house around them. The bathtubs, the taps and the medicine cabinet are majestic; the porcelain, mirror and brass are yellowing in the corners with stains that aren’t stains, because you can get rid of a stain but you can’t get rid of these. I can’t imagine the tap in our bathroom sink without that pale, discoloured cloud underneath it, or the mirror of the medicine cabinet in my parents’ bathroom without the black spots on the left-hand side. However, what really makes these bathrooms feel old, as if they’re of an earlier time, are the tiles covering the walls right up to the ceiling. What is it that makes those tiles so old? I don’t know. I only know that they’re impossible to count. No, that’s not all I know. I also know that although the bathrooms seem the same, like twins, they’re not.
And then there’s the ground floor, which is the same size as the first but seems bigger. It only seems it, though: I know they’re really the same size. And yet, even though I know this, every now and again I feel the need to compare corners and angles, to see how the walls of one floor and another are the same. Or rather: are aligned. The walls of the ground floor and those of the first floor are aligned. However, the ground floor seems bigger.
On the ground floor are the kitchen, the dining room, the living room and the study my father shares with my older brother. There’s another, smaller bathroom, squeezed in between the kitchen and the staircase. There’s a small cleaning cupboard. There’s an entrance hall leading to the front door.
And of course, at the front of the house on the left, looking out over the garden, is the president’s room.
The President’s Room by Richard Romero, translated by Charlotte Coombe, is out now published by Charco Press priced £8.99.
In The Twa Corbies of Cardross, one of twelve crime stories in new anthology Bloody Scotland, Craig Robertson explores the sinister side of Scotland’s heritage. We visit St Peter’s Seminary, once an impressive example of architectural innovation and now a desolate and crumbling ruin, on a cold November morning when the dead don’t seem far away…
Extract from The Twa Corbies of Cardross
By Craig Robertson
Published by Historic Environment Scotland
St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
‘Whar sall we gang and dine the-day’
I’m Black, he’s Stout. Simple names for simple lives. We work together, best we can. Two sets of eyes can see opportunities in double quick time, take advantage before some other thief can step in and steal your pitch. If he goes hungry then so do I. We’re a team, Stout and me. A team.
‘Where are we going to eat today, Mr Black?’ he asks me.
‘If you want to fly to one of the cities then how about the Witchery?’ I reply. ‘Or maybe the Rogano? I’ve heard the fish at Ondine is the best there is.’
‘Too rich for my blood,’ Mr Stout says. ‘Far too rich. I’m a country bird at heart, a bird of simple tastes, you know that. Besides, my purse is as empty as my belly. Our pickings will have to come as free as the air. What’s fresh on the wind today, Mr Black?’
Stout knew I was joking. The best tables weren’t for the likes of us. Old Stouty and I aren’t welcome, you see. Our faces don’t fit. Not even close. It’s not just that the people don’t want us. It’s that they barely notice we exist.
They don’t see us as we fade into the grey of the sky and the thick of the clouds. We fly in the shadows and pick at their pockets, trip at their feet. We were here before them and will still be here when they are long gone. We see everything and are seen only by the few. We’re in the woods and the concrete, we’re in the rafters and the gloom, we’re deep in the blood of the place.
The truth is we eat anything, Mr Stout and me. That’s how desperately we live our lives. It might be the spoils of the fields or whatever we can salvage from the leftovers of those better provided for. We’d eat each other if we had to. It’s all fair game when you’re hungry.
You’ve never known real hunger unless your belly has been properly empty. Empty like the wind or a broken promise, empty like a past forgotten or a future that will never be. Proper hunger drives you like the devil.
What was fresh on the wind? Well now, there was a question indeed.
In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair.
His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s tain anither mate,
So we may mak oor dinner swate.
Image © Historic Environment Scotland
The place in the woods near Cardross is riddled with corridors and cells, chapels and concrete arches. It’s a derelict house open to all, weather and visitors alike, a dark maze of ruin and stagnant pools, of secluded and secondary thoughts. The tourists might venture there for a thrill or a dare but rarely after lights out, not after the safe company of others has gone home for the night. Then it becomes home to the likes of us and those who would do us harm. In the deep dark, the place in the woods is for dangerous travellers.
They used to call it St Peter’s. They came here, young men all bright and shiny, seeking to learn how best to serve their shepherd. Priests of the citadel, children of the altar, dressed in black smocks from to neck to toe.
One day, the button bright boys left forever and others arrived. Bags of bones with cheeks of flint, eyes dulled and skin grey, these new recruits were not like those who went before. This army served other gods who treated them badly.
Stout and me, we watched them build it, this concrete palace, and we watched it crumble. Years it took as the wind and the rain ate it, chunk by chunk till the woods and the rhododendron swallowed it up, claiming it for their own. No matter how hard you looked, you couldn’t tell where nature stopped and the building started. It’s like that now, at one with the Kilmahew woods and those of us who live in them.
At the edges, its ownership is blurred but at its centre it remains the sanctuary of the boy priests. This was where they came to pray to their god and, of a night or a winter’s morning, you can hear them still, young voices carrying on the wind.
It’s dark and wet down there, guarded by a smashed granite altar, as blind as those who will not see. The sanctuary is a cold bed on a November morning, bitter in the shadows where the sun can’t touch. No place for a soldier boy far from home. No place for the dead to lie out of sight and mind.
Bloody Scotland by Lin Anderson, Chris Brookmyre, Gordon Brown, Ann Cleeves, Doug Johnstone, Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Craig Robertson, Sara Sheridan, E S Thomson, and Louise Welsh is available now priced £12.99.
You can find out more about the birth, death and renewal of St Peter’s Seminary in this article on Books from Scotland.
Simon Ponsonby presents a dynamic and comprehensive study of the work and person of the Holy Spirit in this biblical, theological, practical, historical and also accessible book. He outlines early theology and explains the origins of key words including ghost and spirit.
God Inside Out: An In-depth Study of the Holy Spirit
By Simon Ponsonby
Published by Muddy Pearl
The third person of the Trinity is the third article in the creeds, and sadly often ranked third in theology. Yet, as we shall see, ‘from the stand-point of experience, the Spirit is first’. Indeed, notably in the early Orthodox tradition, late fourth-century prayers like the Trisagion (meaning ‘thrice holy’), which undoubtedly reflect earlier devotions, are unapologetic in praying to, invoking and worshipping the tri-personal God. The Spirit was clearly regarded as central to worship very early on. It was only when the deity of the Spirit and the Son, who were worshipped, was placed under threat by errant theology, that the creeds were formulated to reassert the Church’s belief. The doctrine of the Church did not arise at the councils and with the creeds, but was represented and firmly established by ecumenical councils. Theology articulated spirituality and worship, not vice versa.
Nevertheless, in the fourth century Gregory of Nazianzus called the Spirit Theos Agraptos, the God who nobody writes about. Theologians have described him as ‘the Cinderella of theology’, ‘the orphan doctrine of theology’, the ‘dark side of the moon in Christian theology’, and ‘the stealth weapon of the Church’.
The name ‘Spirit’ is a translation of the Old Testament Hebrew word ruach and the New Testament Greek pneuma. Both terms cover a range of meanings, including wind, breath, air, blowing – all of which find resonances in the biblical text. It was not exclusively used for God, but was a term applied to the individual’s immaterial identity (Psalm 32:2); of a demonic entity (1 Samuel 16:14); of the natural wind (Exodus 14:21); and of the innermost soul of a being (1 Corinthians 2:11). The term ‘Ghost’ (from Old German Geist) found in older translations, is now somewhat misleading due to its change in meaning.
As a divine designate, Spirit conveys the idea of a powerful force which smites Israel’s enemies (Judges 14:19); of the breath from God which sustains life (Job 27:3); and also of the mysterious presence of God ‘who blows where it wills’ (John 3:8), whose origin and destination remain elusive. In John 20:22 Jesus prophetically breathes on the disciples and says: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’, the unction enables their commission – the ministry of forgiving sins where forgiveness is sought in Christ.
The agony of the cross is also the glory, because through it we are restored to God and may receive the Spirit. As Jesus dies, John writes: paredoken to pneuma, ‘he gave up the Spirit’ (John 19:30), not his spirit. Symbolically John is showing that it is the Holy Spirit, not the personal spirit of Christ, which is being released here. Then, after the resurrection, Jesus meets his disciples, blesses them with peace, and breathes on them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven’ (John 20:22f). The cross is the fount from where the forgiveness of sins is purchased, and from where the Spirit is poured forth.
Owen suggests that a ‘peculiar work of Spirit’ was resting over the Beloved’s body in the tomb, not allowing it to see decay (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31). He says: ‘The pure and holy substance was preserved in its integrity by the power of the Holy Spirit, without any of those accidents of change which attend the dead bodies of others.’17 Whether or not this was so, we know that the power of the Spirit was in the tomb, resurrecting, revivifying, raising Jesus bodily from death to life, from the shadows to light, from the grave to glory.
Speaking of this, the ancient apostolic Creed states that Jesus was ‘vindicated in the Spirit’ (1 Timothy 3:16) – his great power worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, authority and every power.
God Inside Out: An In-depth Study of the Holy Spirit by Simon Posonby is out now published by Muddy Pearl priced £12.99.
In Luminous Dark, Alain Emerson retraces his journey through the stages of grief and shock. Choosing to lean into the pain and to face God with his disappointment in a dark tunnel of despair, Alain ultimately finds his way to the light in this thought-provoking personal exploration.
Extract from Luminous Dark
By Alain Emerson
Published by Muddy Pearl
These days I love running in the dark. On winter nights when the air is cold, I set off for a gentle gallop through the streets of my hometown village. Chasing the long shadows of the street lamps as the fog from my own breath dissolves on my perspiring face, I run over the motorway bridge, stealing away from the noise of the late-night commuting traffic, through the spookily serene railway crossing and eventually into the darkness of the countryside. The only thing lighting my path is the low glow of my phone, helping me navigate ankle-damaging potholes and providing a precautionary warning light for the occasional car venturing down these winding country roads. It is dark and still, dangerous and eerie, yet I am not scared.
I no longer fear the darkness.
Even though the night appears vacant, the darkness is filled with, dare I say it, ‘presence’. This is the place where I do my best thinking these days. The night is flooded with mysterious luminosity. It is here my mind and soul are laid bare, the imposter is exposed and my true self revealed. And I rediscover how deeply known and loved I am.
It hasn’t always been that way though.
Like most people I have lived my life scared of the dark, fear gripping hold of my senses on many occasions. From night-time walks as a child, up the creaking long corridor while the whole house was asleep, to wandering the ghostly back streets of townships in Soweto, searching for runaway street-kids as a gap-year volunteer. Darkness for me has been synonymous with fear, confusion and disorientation. It has both frightened and disconcerted me, sending shivers through my spine and causing my knees to buckle.
Yet something changed when I learned, or rather was forced, to stare darkness in the eye, when I was summoned to front it up square in the face. I discovered something liberating happens when we acknowledge the genuine fear we are experiencing from the darkness that surrounds us and yet refuse to let that fear have the last say. Further, the fear is disarmed when we discover there is a light concealed within that very darkness. When we apprehend a certain quality to darkness which draws us further in, beyond what normal feeling or thoughts can comprehend. This is a discovery that cannot simply be learned in abstraction, only encountered as we choose to enter in.
What do I mean? Let me try to explain.
In 2007, when I experienced the great loss of my life, I found myself for long days walking down dark trails of grief ending only in cul-de-sacs. This was due in equal measure to my inability to process my pain, and the incapacity and ignorance of the culture around me to accept the reality of loss and grief.
I hope this book can connect with all who read it, for, truthfully, the valley of the shadow of death, and the way of suffering, grief and loss, is a terrain we all must travel at some point in this life. Loss is woven into the fabric of life and the choice we all have to make is how we will travel through this valley when it is our turn to walk it: we will lose the one we loved most in life; we will do something we never thought we would do; the ideal we carried for years will get smashed up right in front of our face; we will enter the cloud of unknowing for a season where the heavens seem like brass. Love and loss, presence and absence, suffering and resurrection; these are not sets of opposites, rather they ebb and flow together in this current of life on earth. Darkness in this world is as real for most people as light, pain more common than wholeness, loneliness more felt than belonging.
I’ve tried to be as true to myself as I can be; I am a Christian and have been nurtured in that faith tradition all my life. If you are not a Christian, or from a different tradition of faith, I hope you will not find this disengaging. Rather I would encourage you to stay curious with me as I try to genuinely wrestle myself into a reoriented faith space.
Luminous Dark by Alain Emerson is published on 31 October by Muddy Pearl priced £12.99.
The late influential social reformer, peace activist, and policy advisor Kay Carmichael muses upon Halloween in the new book It Takes a Lifetime to Become Yourself. Fondly remembering her grandmother, and her ritualistic custom to engage the souls of the dead, Carmichael argues for a new way of thinking about Halloween, as a festival to enhance our understanding of life and death.
Extract from It Takes a Lifetime to Become Yourself
By Kay Carmichael
Edited by David Donnison
Published by Scotland Street Press
On Halloween, Death and Grandmother
A friend of mine boasts of having met a man who, as a child, had seen an old woman being buried in a barrel because she was thought to have been a witch. The dark side of life fascinates us. Every year at Halloween we re-enact some of the drama.
My doorbell will ring constantly on Sunday evening. Small groups of nervous, excited, weirdly-dressed children will be standing there, ready to come in and perform a party piece in return for nuts, apples and with luck, a silver coin. My role will be to placate evil and pay off the dark spirits.
My grandmother had another version. For her there seemed to be no barriers of fear between the worlds of the living and the dead. Every Halloween, before going to bed, the fire would be made up, a clean white cloth put on the table and bread, water and salt ceremoniously laid out. I was told in a matter-of-fact way that this was hospitality for the souls of the dead. For this one night, they were allowed to return to visit the world of the living. They would come between midnight and dawn; and it was important to be prepared for them.
I slept with her in the hole-in-the-wall bed in the same room where we lived and ate during the day. So that night I would try to stay awake to see our ghostly visitors. I never managed to and when I woke in the morning, the table would be cleared and laid for breakfast. It was only when I visited Mexico as an adult and learned something of their ritual links with the dead that I realised my indoctrination was part of a worldwide tradition of duties and obligations that reach beyond death.
These gentle rituals have been maintained largely by women, yet the notion of the bad, horrible and ugly witch is the one which is superimposed on Halloween. In the old Celtic calendar, it was indeed a festival of witches, but these witches’ ‘crafts’ were based on the old fertility religions.
Death and fertility are closely linked. Men may kill and fertilise, but women have been left to manage and organise the consequences – the laying out of the dead, the birth of children. These are awesome and magical activities, which carry their own kind of power. In the last forty years women in ‘advanced’ countries have been giving up these powers. Few people now have their eyes closed for the last time and their bodies washed and laid out by one who has known and loved them. But women are reclaiming power over birthing and sharing that power with their men. Perhaps we can do the same for death; bring it back into our lives; retain the awe but cast out the fear.
As the proportion of aged amongst us increases we are going to be more aware of death and dying. We will need more than nuts, apples and a silver coin to buy our way out of the scientific magic of preserving life. Perhaps we need a new Halloween festival that will symbolise death with dignity – a witch we can learn not to fear, whose mask may be awesome but not ugly.
Gran
I saw her dead,
the generous body
into which I’d coorie
shrunk.
She was ready now
for a decent funeral
at the end of a decent life.
She had taught me
the virtues:
clean clothes,
a clean and tidy house
and loving.
I loved her.
I never said the words
but I think she knew
by the way
I clung to her skirts.
If there’s a heaven
she’ll be there
picking up feathers
dropped from angels’ wings
and washing Jesus’ bloody garments.
It Takes a Lifetime to Become Yourself, by Kay Carmichael and edited by David Donnison, is out now published by Scotland Street Press priced £10.99.
Ian Rankin’s short story Sinner: Justified is part of Superhumanatural exploring the life and work of provocative Scottish artist Douglas Gordon whose work includes 24 Hour Psycho and Black Burns, currently at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Rankin takes us deep into the dark underbelly of Edinburgh, where lines between fact and fiction are blurred, and where ghost tours in and around the city’s iconic narrow closes tell infamous stories of murder and mayhem.
Extract from Douglas Gordon: Superhumanatural
By Ian Rankin, Keith Hartley, Holger Broeker, Dr Jaroslav Andel
Published by National Galleries of Scotland
Extract from Sinner: Justified
By Ian Rankin
The first time Gordon Douglas met Jean Brodie, he was supping at the Last Drop.
It was a typical Edinburgh watering hole, named for its situation opposite the city’s gallows. A plaque across the street listed some of the hangman’s victims, Covenanters included. Late summer and Gordon was at one of the outdoor tables, trying to remember which came first, Mr Hyde or Jack the Ripper?
He was doing postgraduate studies, Department of History. Should have been spending the summer writing a new chapter in the stifling National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge, but needed money for rent and food – life’s simple necessities – plus smokes and beer – pleasures of the flesh.
So he’d answered an ad and ended up a tour guide. Fine, he knew most of the stuff, and as his employer had told him, ‘make up the rest, so long as it’s delivered with confidence’.
The first week he’d been nervous. By the third, he was supplementing daytime walking tours with evening work, shifting from culture and history to ghosts and serial killers. Major Weir and his sister admitting to witchcraft; grave-robbers; Burke and Hare; Deacon Brodie burrowing into Robert Louis Stevenson’s subconscious.
The city Gordon thought he lived in was transformed as a result. Just along from the Last Drop was a lap-dancing bar named after Burke and Hare. Other pubs celebrated Arthur Conan Doyle and Jekyll and Hyde. The Edinburgh Dungeon always seemed to have a queue outside. The late-night graveyard tours were sell-outs. There was so much appetite for this other side of the city. So much hunger.
Gordon had spent most of the morning on Dean Bridge, staring down at the Water of Leith. His walks along the river had always seemed enchanted, the city hovering somewhere above him. But by nightfall it had become a place of shadows and assignations, and he would no longer walk there unless accompanied by his tour party. Edinburgh had always seemed two cities to him – New Town and Old; East End and West; Hibs and Hearts; town and gown; haves and have-nots. The thesis he was supposed to be writing had as its theme the aftershock of Culloden. But his tutor had made the mistake of mentioning ‘the Caledonian antisyzygy’, leading him down a side road where he started to explore the Scottish psyche, that apparent need to be ‘where extremes meet’. As a young man, the novelist Stevenson would sneak out of his stuffy middle-class home in the New Town and head for the stews on the other side of Princes Street, where he could rub shoulders with cut- throats, drunks and whores. Later, the figure of Jekyll would reflect his creator.
Scratch the veneer, and the face of Hyde began to emerge.
Edinburgh: city of night. So douce and proper in daytime…
But which came first, Mr Hyde or the Ripper? Gordon had started to forget these simple facts, stumbling over his speeches to his tour parties.
They’d be crowded around him, drinking in every word and phrase, sometimes with a video camera trained on him, but then his head would start to birl, as if Burke and Hare were dancing with Deacon Brodie, Major Weir clapping out a tune while his sister grinned and Captain Porteous swung in time, from a makeshift scaffold…
‘Jekyll came first.’
It took Gordon a moment to realise he’d spoken out loud. He looked around the tables, but no one had noticed. They were tourists mostly, poring over maps and guidebooks while nursing soft drinks.
Yes: the book had been turned into a play, and this play was on in London at the time of the Ripper killings, perhaps leading people to conflate the two, coming to the conclusion that Jack must be a doctor… must, in fact, be Jekyll.
The chair opposite him grated a little against the pavement as it was drawn out from the table. A woman sat down, glancing around before seeming to notice him. She wore a thin pastel-coloured cardigan buttoned to the neck, and her hair was drawn back from her forehead. Her eyes bore into his. ‘I require your assistance,’ she said in a lilting Morningside voice. ‘A man is
following me.’ She looked around her again.
‘Want me to call the police?’ Gordon had lifted his phone from the table.
She stared at it blankly. ‘Your presence is all that’s required, young man.
Why do you smile?’
‘I’m twenty-two.’
‘Your point being…?’
‘You can’t be that much older than me.’
She wriggled a little, seeming pleased, but then remembered her situation.
She scanned the street again. ‘He must be in one of the shops.’
Gordon looked, too. Windows stared back at him, showing little more than reflections.
‘Are you a naval gentleman?’ the woman asked. ‘Only naval gentlemen require such an array of tattoos.’
Gordon lifted his forearms. ‘Celtic symbols,’ he explained.
‘Quite repellent to the fairer sex, as I’m sure you’ve found.’ She was rising to her feet. ‘I think I’m safe now.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ She reached into her brown leather bag for a lace-edged hankie with which to dab her face. ‘Men can be such ugly creatures. Perhaps he sought to woo me.’ She studied Gordon. ‘You are smiling again.’
‘Sorry, it’s the way you speak. You sound like…’ But the character’s name had slipped his memory.
‘My name is Jean Brodie, young man, and I sound exactly like myself.’ She gave a little smile of her own as she turned to leave. Gordon watched her. She was tall and slender, wrapped in a long skirt despite the heat. Flat shoes which clacked as she walked. He gave a little laugh, but she didn’t turn round.
The above is extracted from short story Sinner: Justified by Ian Rankin, written as part Superhumanatural, which highlights the work of contemporary Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. Superhumanatural is out now published by National Galleries of Scotland priced £12.95.
We are pleased to showcase some images from the book below.
Douglas Gordon: Superhumanatural, by Ian Rankin, Keith Hartley, Holger Broeker, and Dr Jaroslav Andel, is out now priced £12.95 published by National Galleries of Scotland.
Our monthly columnist enjoys the hotly anticipated new novel from Man Booker Prize shortlisted author Graeme Macrae Burnet. Set in the claustrophobic town of Saint-Louis in Alsace, the book reintroduces the troubled Inspector Georges Gorski, who readers first encountered in The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, as he puzzles over a fatal car crash on the A35 where, at first, nothing appears to be remarkable.
Since readers were first introduced to Detective Inspector Georges Gorski in The Disappearance of Adle Bedeau in 2014, the fortunes of both his creator, Graeme Macrae Burnet, and the book’s publisher, Saraband, have been transformed. Being the best-seller on the 2016 Man Booker shortlist and winner of the Saltire prize for Novel of the Year tends to have that effect: it also leaves thousands of readers worldwide eagerly anticipating what Burnet is going to write next.
The answer is The Accident on the A35, which Contraband publishes on 26 October. It takes us back to the claustrophobically small town of Saint-Louis in Alsace in which the first book was set, reintroduces us to Gorski (who is now chief of police) and gets briskly under way with an investigation of the fatal car crash of the title, in which a lawyer whom no-one liked is killed in unsuspicious circumstances.
There is a lot more to it, as one would expect from the literary games-master Burnet has proved himself to be in both his previous novels, but let’s leave that to one side for now. Instead, let’s begin with the moment when Gorski turns up at the lawyer’s house to report the accidental death.
It’s a quarter to midnight. The door is opened by a suspicious housekeeper. She needs persuading, but eventually tells Gorski that the lawyer’s wife will receive him in her boudoir. She is attractive. Ringlets frame her heart-shaped face and her night-dress hangs so loosely round her chest that Gorski has to avert his eyes. We, the readers, do not avert ours. We know where this is going, because that’s where it always goes when you have a hard-working, hard-drinking cop whose own wife has just left him (tick, tick, tick) who meets an attractive woman who asks him to find out more about her husband’s death.
Gorski then goes next door to talk to the woman’s son. And this is where Burnet slips out of the crime genre into literary fiction. He’ll spend the rest of the novel criss-crossing between the two, but this time is the only occasion in which that happens in adjoining rooms.
In his bedroom, 17-year-old Raymond Barthelme is reading Sartre’s novel The Age of Reason. His schoolfriend told him Sartre himself used to like to sit on a straight-backed chair while reading, so he has dragged one to the middle of the room. On it, Raymond is reading the scene from the book in which a character, drunk and in a nightclub, demonstrates her total freedom by cutting the palm of her hand with a knife. There will be enough references to Sartre’s novel in this one to keep a PhD student happily toiling away for years on such a thesis: the fact that it has a character called Brunet, the name of the supposed author of this novel (Burnet himself pretending to be no more than its translator) will, presumably, be worth a chapter at least. And there will indeed, at some later point, be a scene in a nightclub with drunkenness and much blood.
If all of this were just showing off by doing metafictional wheelies, it would hardly be worth mentioning. What matters far more than is whether this set-up feels believable. And yes, it does. Seventeen-year-olds tend to be fascinated by entry-level existentialism because it, like them, is fascinated by the possibilities of freedom. So I’d accept that a bright boy like Raymond would be reading a scene like that one in The Age of Reason to discuss it with his two closest schoolfriends the next day. I’d accept that he’d try to copy Sartre by sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the middle of the room. And I’d accept that, when young Raymond answers the door to the policeman, he would feel bit guilty, because the chair in the middle of his bedroom does indeed look odd. Being a bright boy, he’s already heard the housekeeper answer the front door, knows that no-one rings the doorbell at a quarter to midnight unless there’s bad news, so he’s guessed that there has probably been some kind of accident, and he hopes that it has been a serious one, because his repressive, controlling father is the one great obstacle to his own freedom in this bourgeois backwater.
None of this is laboriously spelt out, but it all feels exactly right. Everything I have described takes place within a handful of pages and most of the details rush by, without emphasis, between commas. I mention them only because just the other day I was thinking about that moment when you realise you are reading a good book, one that you’ll actually be surprised if it turns out to be a disappointment.
For me, it’s all about those two bedrooms. From underneath the door of the first, out snakes a plot that is always going to head towards sex and death. There will be a femme fatale, a crime passionel, and cynical cops putting the world to right, one corpse at a time, with reassuring ingenuity: enjoyable enough if done right, the way a jigsaw puzzle or a crossword is. From underneath the door of the second bedroom, though, comes a plot that is altogether less predictable, more complex and easier to derail, as Raymond sets off to find out more about his dead father. Here, what matters most is psychological realism, the easiest thing in the world to get wrong as it vanishes the moment that reader starts having doubts about whether the characters really would act, in small things as well as big, the way they do.
What’s impressive about Burnet’s new novel is the way in which even though both of his main characters – Gorski and Raymond – are pushed to extremes, tested almost to destruction, their interior lives remain credible throughout. Mad, or blurred with drink, or both, but definitely credible. Which takes some doing.
That moment when you know you’re reading a good book is like the moment when you know you’re watching a good film. You’ve caught the actor expresses an emotion in a way that isn’t just acting but is entirely recognisable from everyday life. If we were actors, or film directors, we’d want just such a moment in our own film. It’s the same with a book. We’d want, in the novels we never will write, to have the kind of psychological realism Burnet sprinkles throughout this book like icing sugar on a cake. If His Bloody Project was all about how little one can see inside the minds of the main protagonists, The Accident on the A35 is about how much, and how credibly.
Burnet adds another layer of complexity by suggesting that this is an autobiographical novel written by one of its characters. I don’t think it even needs this extra ornamentation. It already reads like a lavishly detailed, psychologically accurate, intelligent, well-plotted, unsimple Simenon. And isn’t that enough for anybody?
The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet is published by Contraband, and imprint of Saraband, on 26 October, priced £12.99. You can listen to an audio extract from The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau here on Books from Scotland.
Anthony O’Neill extends Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale in this imaginative new novel. Seven years after the death of Edward Hyde, a stylish gentleman, claiming to be Dr Henry Jekyll, shows up in foggy London. But is this man who he says he is?
Extract from Dr Jekyll and Mr Seek
By Anthony O’Neill
Published by Black and White Publishing
A sulphurous yellow fog, so thick it muffled the chimes of the Sunday church bells, had fastened overnight to London and refused to be dislodged by even the stiffest of breezes. It smothered domes and spires, blurred chimneys and gables, smudged walls and windows, and altogether turned the city into an immense spectral museum, through which even the most audacious traveller proceeded warily, never certain of what strange sights might lurk in the next chamber.
Mr Gabriel Utterson, the bald and bird-like lawyer, and his distant kinsman Mr Richard Enfield, the dashing man about town, were more than familiar with London fogs, having conducted their Sunday walks together for nearly eighteen years. Yet it is by no means certain that, were it not for the density of this particular fog on this particular day, they would have found themselves in a by-street of peculiar infamy.
‘Well,’ said Enfield, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘I should not need to tell you where the hand of fate has guided us.’
‘I know the street well enough,’ replied Utterson.
‘A certain building – yes, I see it now. A place as disagreeable as the man who emerged from it.’
‘He has not emerged from it for some time now. Nor from any other building, I wager.’
‘And yet, I can still see his face,’ mused Enfield, ‘as if it were yesterday.’
Both men were staring across the street, where not far from the corner was a windowless building with a frowning gable and a dark, blistered door. And both men remembered, with remarkable immediacy, the hideous little man called Hyde who had scuttled out of that door, and slithered into the night, and enacted crimes so evil that they still had the power to chill the blood, even when viewed through the misted window of memory.
‘How long has it been now?’ asked Enfield.
‘Nearly seven years,’ his companion replied.
‘Seven years? Since he trampled over that poor girl? And murdered Sir Danvers Carew?’
‘And took his own life, in those very dissecting rooms.’
‘Seven years…’ said Enfield, staring fixedly at the place. ‘Then it is also seven years,’ he went on, ‘since Jekyll disappeared?’
‘Quite so.’
‘Meaning that you, being Jekyll’s lawyer and sole beneficiary, will shortly be taking possession of his estate?’
‘Within two weeks, in fact.’
‘Including all his property?’
‘As Jekyll himself directed.’
Enfield nodded slowly, still looking across the street. ‘Then how, may I ask, are you inclined to deal with it?’
‘With the dissecting rooms?’ Utterson asked. ‘I intend to sell them as soon as possible, for they hold no value to me – and little to anyone else, I fancy.’
The younger man nodded. ‘There is nothing good to be said for them,’ he said. ‘So let us hope they are soon demolished, and quickly forgotten.’
‘Quite right,’ said Utterson.
But both men knew that this was only half the story, for the dissecting rooms were connected at their rear to another, more presentable, building, which in turn faced onto another, more presentable street. And it was to inspect the front of this other residence that the two men now progressed, as if by some tacit agreement, down to the corner and across the square.
‘We enjoyed some splendid dinners with Jekyll there,’ said Enfield, looking back.
‘We did indeed.’
‘Henry was an exceptional host.’
‘He was.’
‘He had exquisite taste in most things.’
‘That, too, cannot be denied.’
Enfield nodded. ‘Are you intending to sell his home as
well?’
‘No, I cannot bear to do so,’ said Utterson. ‘Of all the houses in London, it has always been my favourite. I would hate to relinquish it now.’
‘I doubt Henry would want you to,’ Enfield said.
‘I doubt it, too.’
The two men regarded the handsome façade, with its gleaming windows, polished bricks and mullioned door, forclose to a minute.
‘So what, indeed, are your plans for the place?’
‘Well,’ said Utterson, shifting, ‘I might yet make some use of it, you know.’
‘Indeed?’
‘It would be a pity to let it go empty.’
‘I suppose so.’
Enfield’s curiosity sounded innocent enough, but Utterson had a sense he was skirting around something – some disquieting revelation, perhaps. So the two men stood stiffly for a while, and finally the younger one sighed.
‘You know, I must tell you something, dear friend. And not with any relish, I’m bound.’
‘Oh?’
‘Something I overheard at my club. A conversation about the fate of Jekyll, and your part in the whole business.’
‘My part, you say?’
‘It was some months ago now, and to this day I’ve not cared to mention it. But as I’m to leave town tomorrow, and as you’re about to take over the estate, it might be best that you became aware of some of the mutterings that are abroad.’
‘Mutterings?’ Utterson said, frowning. ‘And what indeed are these mutterings?’
‘No’ – Enfield appeared to change his mind – ‘I shan’t repeat it. Claptrap, the lot of it. But you should brace yourself, dear friend, lest any of the slander reaches your ears.’
Utterson did not say it, but some of the slander – to the effect that he had played some sinister role in Jekyll’s disappearance, even rewritten the doctor’s will in his own favour – had already reached his ears. And while he never enjoyed hearing such calumnies, he could scarcely help being curious about them.
‘Do tell, at least, what gave rise to such talk.’
‘There was a new member at my club,’ Enfield said, ‘who proved especially curious about Jekyll. I cannot remember his name, and I’ve not encountered him since.’
‘He gave no reason for asking such questions?’
‘Well, he had good reason after the sordid death of that other Jekyll – Thomas Jekyll, Henry’s brother.’
‘A half-brother,’ said Utterson. ‘Henry mentioned him once, without any affection.’
‘Still, the particulars of his demise appeared in The Times, together with a reference to Henry’s previous disappearance – you must remember?’
‘I remember. And this prompted the stranger to enquire about me?’
‘Chiefly about Henry, but your name surfaced now and then. Nonsense, I say. Nonsense, the lot of it.’
Enfield did not elaborate, and Utterson decided he did not really care to pry – not on this day, in any event. Somewhere a hurdy-gurdy player was cranking out carnival tunes; a dog was yapping furiously; someone was laughing like a demon. The two men, unsettled, were about to move on when Enfield leaned forward.
‘I say,’ he said, squinting into the mist, ‘is that smoke, rising from Jekyll’s chimney?’
Utterson, adjusting his spectacles, saw a stain of dark smoke curling into the fog.
‘Seems so,’ he said, shrugging. ‘The housekeeper, no doubt. I’ve engaged one to maintain the home, in the absence of any other staff.’
‘Lives in the place, does she?’
‘No, but she is in possession of a key, and works when she pleases.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘It makes sense, as she has duties elsewhere.’
In truth Utterson was further unsettled by the sight, but the accumulation of sour memories and sensations, so unsuited to the humour of their weekly stroll, left him ill-equipped for more unpleasantness. So he changed the subject.
‘In any case,’ he said, ‘this is not getting us any closer to our destination.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Enfield – though in truth the two men, in all their years of ambling, had never really had a precise destination.
For all that, when they parted, after enjoying a lark pie and coffee at Pagani’s, it was with a great deal of warmth and not a little sadness. Enfield passed across the key to his apartment, so that his kinsman might inspect the place in his absence, then the two men shook hands vigorously before going their separate ways, Utterson heading solemnly for south London and Enfield moving at a clip towards Piccadilly – neither man suspecting that one of them would shortly be dead.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Seek by Anthony O’Neill is out now published by Black and White Publishing priced £8.99.
Extract from The White Stag Adventure
By Rennie McOwen
Published by Rowan Tree Publishing
The Clan had a war-like air about them as they hurried down to the shore.
“We’ve got to report all this when we get back,” said Clare. “Poachers and a white stag. We’ll have to keep a good lookout for them in future. We can’t let them get away with killing deer on our ground, and we’re certainly not going to let them kill the white stag.”
“Perhaps we could mount hill patrols?” said Mot. “We could show that we’re around and scare them off.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” added Michael.
Gavin waited silently, as he generally did, on Clare summing the matter up.
“No,” she said. “We don’t want to scare them off. And we don’t want to be seen. We want to catch them. Tomorrow we can have a council of war, and we’ll start with a full ceremonial parade on the island as soon after breakfast as we can get there.
“Yes, and we must also finish off the roof. We’ve got to have a decent base.”
She made her way to a thick clump of alders beside the shore. There, hidden by the trees, was a little inlet among the rocks. There too was a raft like Gavin’s, but longer and larger, with room for three people sitting one in front of the other.
“Gosh!” breathed Gavin. “How long did it take you to make that?”
“Oh, it’s been here for ages,” said Clare. “Uncle Fergus had it in an old barn at the farm and we think it must have been made for children long ago, or perhaps for fishing from because there are a lot of trout in the lochan.
“We took it down at the start of the holiday. Uncle Fergus and two of his friends helped us carry it down. It’s a bit heavy to paddle, but if there are three of us and you don’t rock it too much, it’s not bad. We’ve even named it.”
Gavin looked at the bow and there, painted in somewhat shaky green letters on the logs, were the words Galley of the Waves.
“Galley is another Gaelic word for a boat or ship,” said Clare, “but generally bigger than a birlinn. We made your birlinn ourselves. Which reminds me… you’d better go and get it, Gavin, and follow us over.”
Gavin had been so full of the conversation that he had forgotten his own birlinn.
He sped off to get it, hopped on board and paddled out into the loch. Gavin found it much easier this time.
Ahead of him he could see the galley bashing through the water, the three paddles making it send up a long bow wave and wake, which eventually rippled back to Gavin’s birlinn, making it rock when it reached him.
Both rafts landed safely.
“Pull them well up,” said Clare. “Gavin, we’ve got a hidden place for the galley. Put the birlinn back where you found it in these bushes.”
Michael, Mot and Clare tugged the galley over the stones and into the trees, where they rolled it into a little hollow among the birches. Then they covered it with old branches and torn-up ferns. It could not now be seen by any casual passer-by.
“What’s your hiding place like, Gavin?” said Clare, coming over to inspect it. Gavin had tugged the birlinn in among the rocks and it was well screened by bushes.
“That’s fine,” said Clare. “Michael, have you got those things to show Uncle Fergus?”
Michael tapped his small rucksack and then, having second thoughts, opened it and looked in. He held out the small interwoven chain and the metal spearhead. “Both safe,” he confirmed.
“Let’s go and eat,” said Clare. “We’ve got a lot of planning to do.”
Just before they left the shore, they turned and scanned the skyline of the hills behind the lochan, but the deer had gone.
Gavin thought the hills looked magnificent. Seamed and rough, steep and rocky, the sun lit up all the little hollows and crags, making them yellow and golden, turning to black when the beams moved on.
“What a great place to go,” he said, pointing to the hills.
“But we are going to go there,” said Clare. “That’s the way we’ll take when we go up Ben Buidhe to see the sun coming up. It’ll be fun. Now let’s get back to the house. Tomorrow we go to war!”
The White Stag Adventure is published on 2 November by Rowan Tree Publishing priced £7.99. The book continues the The Clans series, first encountered in Light On Dumyat; read an extract from this earlier book here on Books from Scotland.
Laura is the latest addition to the Bright Red Publishing team, which she joined last spring to work as a Digital Editor. Having moved from Genoa in Italy to complete a Masters in Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University, she is getting used to life in Scotland one wee step at a time. One of her proudest achievements with regards to that is managing to keep calm whenever her colleagues order chicken pasta for lunch.
When I started working for Bright Red Publishing last Spring, one thing became clear pretty soon: we needed to prepare; the beginning of the school year was coming. Now, almost six months later, the academic year has well and truly begun, accompanied by a heap of exciting publication plans and brand-new books – the Bright Red office has been buzzing with marketing ideas!
It is my first back to school season since joining the company last spring, and I am really quite fascinated by the change in the atmosphere at the office. The whole team is in full gear, working extra hard to carry out our new projects and to ensure all our study guides are up to date with course changes, but we are also preparing for all of the challenges and events the year will bring.
It is a new beginning, and it requires careful planning (and a good deal of excitement). Teaching conferences and parents’ nights are on top of our events list for the autumn, which means that I get to vary my work routine to make space for trips out of the office and around Scotland. Aside from the obvious reasons for doing this (getting direct feedback from parents and students; meeting teachers and authors at bespoke conferences; spending a whole day without looking at excel spreadsheets), this has the additional perk of allowing me to explore Scotland a bit more and even to pet the occasional snake, which is very exciting.
And in all frankness, excitement is the word that comes to mind most frequently if I think back to most of my experiences within the Scottish publishing industry. Ever since I first moved to Edinburgh two years ago, there has not been a dull moment, and that is largely due to the welcoming nature of the Scottish publishing scene.
When I moved to Scotland for my postgraduate studies, I never would have believed it had anyone told me that two years on I would be navigating my parents through EIBF to show them books of the publishing company I worked for. And that, not for any particular reason but the fact that I did not think Scotland could ever feel like home. And yet, here we are. As hard as it was to move, what I found when I got here was well worth the trip: a very welcoming and inclusive publishing scene based on work ethic and new ideas.
Starting with the many Edinburgh Napier University alumni who took the time to introduce their businesses and publishing houses to the new cohort of students, and with the SYP Scotland and their comprehensive list of events and talks, the feeling of being part of a wide and strong network was immediate. This impression was then confirmed when I had the opportunity to attend Bologna Book Fair and to witness first-hand the support network Publishing Scotland provides independent publishers with.
Approaching it as an outsider, I must admit that at first, I did fall for the cliché image of the publishing industry as distinct and fascinating, if a little antiquated. To my initial stupor, I was presented with an energetic, passionate group of independent publishers, with fresh ideas and an ever-stronger impulse towards innovation and improvement.
This has been confirmed every step of the way as I got the chance to work on and help deliver exciting new projects – exhibit A being Bright Red’s new digital assessment tool, which has been awarded a SMART fund for innovative development by Scottish Enterprise. This will be structured and catered specifically to the Scottish curriculum, with the aim of improving attainment and engagement levels in schools by providing students with a gamified testing environment. Which, quite frankly, makes for a very exciting job spec, and a very hard time explaining to your relatives what it is exactly that you do for a living.
Overall, Scotland has provided me not only with essential knowledge to build my career upon, but also with a network of people and events to support my career choices. For the future, I am looking forward to building on those and by practicing what I learnt by attending a Digital Project Management course at the Publishing Training Centre (kindly funded by the Printing Charity). I am also hoping to raise awareness on how to make proper carbonara, one homecooked meal at a time.
Laura Borrelli is Digital Editor at Edinburgh-based Bright Red Publishing. You can find out more about Bright Red’s activity as one of Scotland’s leading educational publishers in this article previously published on Books from Scotland.
Extract from Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
By Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis
Published by the British Library
When we refer to the freedom of speech, we do not mean the freedom to go out into the wilderness and whisper to the night sky or scribble in the sand. If nobody will hear or read our words, we may express anything, but can communicate nothing. The freedom of communication is what counts, and communication requires one or more recipients. It is something that people do with other people, and such actions are constrained by the rights, freedoms, and often the wishes of everyone involved, as well as by the social norms that shape what we can say, and even what it occurs to us to say. Those involved in a particular communication include the speaker or speakers, the audience, and others who may be affected even if they do not participate directly, such as the one who is being spoken about. Though censorship is something of a dirty word, and nobody wants to be called a censor, censorship is inevitable because people impose limits on each other’s actions.
Isn’t speech fundamentally different from action, though? What harm can words do? This reasoning can lead to the conclusion that speech should never be restricted because it cannot actually hurt anyone, and that those who believe they have been harmed by speech simply need to grow a thicker skin. We find this position unconvincing. Speech involves action, and has tangible effects, though these are rarely easy to predict or control. The same power that exposes a corrupt government can incite mob violence against a vulnerable person. A state can declare war, a judge can pass a sentence, and anybody can give names to things. As the philosopher Judith Butler argues, the names that others use for us, whether categories like ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘Black’, and ‘White’, or any number of terms of abuse, add up over time to become the stuff that our sense of self is made of. There is some room to push back against these names, change them, make them our own, and reject them. There is no way to escape them. Because speech is powerful, our freedom to speak must be defended from unjust restrictions. Because speech is powerful, however, that freedom cannot be absolute. Like action, speech will always raise ethical and legal questions.
Whether through laws, regulations, policies, or social conventions, people restrict speech because of the actions that they believe it to be performing. To give a few examples, laws have historically prohibited speech that incites crime or violence, betrays the state, foments political dissent, reveals classified information, disturbs the peace, corrupts morals, promotes hatred against groups, denies genocides, damages reputations or business interests, steals intellectual property, extorts money, insults rulers, questions religious doctrine, attacks religious figures or gods, invades privacy, and harasses, abuses, threatens, blackmails, or defrauds individuals. Are these restrictions good or bad? Unless you happen to accept the possible consequences of every imaginable speech act, then you will find some restrictions reasonable and others arbitrary, ill conceived, oppressive, or unethical. We suggest that most people are actually okay with many different kinds of censorship. Censored deals with more contentious cases, in which those whose speech was restricted have struggled against the constraints.
Our aim is to tell stories that reveal how the censorship of literature has developed over time. We strive to be fair and accurate, but not neutral. There are many instances of injustice and the abuse of power in this book, as well as cases that are more difficult to call. Hit Man, for instance, presents itself as a handbook for would-be assassins. When its instructions were used to commit a murder, an appeals court found that the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of speech, did not protect Hit Man’s publisher from a civil lawsuit. Given that the publisher admitted that he intended the book to be used to commit crimes, was this a reasonable limitation of his liberties or a slippery slope leading to the censorship of crime novels and films? We invite you to consider the perspectives we present, and to think about where you would draw your own lines.
Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control by Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis is out now published by the British Library priced £25. It was published in September during Banned Books Week.
Matthew Fellion is a writer and independent scholar who lives in Edinburgh. Katherine Inglis is a lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.
Stephanie Wolfe Murray: A Most Unlikely Publisher
By Rupert Wolfe Murray
I would like to draw your attention to the PDF version (available in full at the end of this article) of the wee book I recently published about my dear departed Mother – Stephanie Wolfe Murray.
I suggest you download it, read it and keep it somewhere safe as it’s an uplifting and witty read despite the tragedy of her death at just 76 years of age.
The book is a collection of anecdotes from friends, family, publishers, authors, aid workers and lost souls who found solace in her open house and ability to forgive. Five hundred copies were printed and it’s already out of print.
It came together in just a few weeks (thanks to the artist and book designer Jim Hutcheson) and in this article I described the nerve wracking process of crowdfunding for the printing costs.
Stephanie Wolfe Murray in the early Sixties
She was a Debutante
My Mother left school early, didn’t go to university and by the age of 20 she already had a child (my big brother Kim, whose tribute to her you can see here). She had no ambition of getting into publishing.
When she was three years old the news came that her father had been killed in France, in the last days of the Second World War. Her mother, Wendy, remarried a kindly gent called Harry who had survived a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Burma and didn’t mind taking orders from his wife.
Wendy, my Mother’s mother, was ambitious for her two daughters. Her priority was to get them married to wealthy gentlemen or, even better, landed aristocrats who would not only provide for them but would help the family move up the class system. The fact that my Mum was beautiful and popular was most promising. Problem was, she didn’t take orders from her mother and wasn’t going to be railroaded into marriage.
She was launched into “society” as a debutante (they used to call it “coming out”) and was a hit: the young aristos crowded round, queued up and competed to take her to dances, to dinner and to their big country houses.
Things were going swimmingly until she met Angus Wolfe Murray. His credentials – old colonial family, an education of sorts at Eton – could have been buffed up and, if he’d had a good job and a suit, my Grandmother may have been won round.
But my Dad had no interest in complying to social norms or impressing my Granny. He hated public school, respectable clothes, and had no intention of getting rich or aspiring to the upper class. He wore drainpipe jeans and a donkey jacket, didn’t have money and my Granny was horrified. A clash was inevitable.
My Mother was sent to New York City in the hope that she would forget about this ghastly chap with the donkey jacket. But it didn’t work – not only were they in love but my Mother was pregnant and, what my Granny never really understood, was that my Mother rejected the conventional life that she was expected to enter into.
She was inspired by my Father, didn’t think twice about throwing away a life of luxury, got married and ended up living in a remote house in the Highlands of Scotland (if you click here you can see a short film of us in 1968).
By the early 1970s we were living near Edinburgh and my Mother’s hands were full: she had four boys and a big house to look after; the idea of setting up a publishing company must have seemed as remote as going to the moon.
Stephanie Wolfe Murray at Canongate Books
The Birth of Canongate
My Dad had inherited a big house in the countryside, an hour south of Edinburgh, but he couldn’t earn enough money by writing books to fix the roof, buy food and pay the bills. He didn’t want a conventional job but he needed to make some money.
This is how he tells the story:
‘A new friend, Bob Shure, wandered into our lives… Bob was American and ended up at our place. I can’t remember why. I liked him at once… He had written Monk, about a young man who climbed up a tower at a university campus and started shooting people. Sounded terrible but it was great, certainly different. He couldn’t get it published.
Late one night, well into the second bottle of vino, I said, “We’ll start a publishing house.” Bob said, “What are you going to publish?” I said, “Monk.” He said, “I’m with you.” Next morning I asked, “Do you remember what we agreed last night?” Bob said, “Best idea in years.” I said, “What was that?” He said, “We’re publishing Monk.”’
I remember these discussions taking place and I also have a clear memory of my Mother looking on, wanting to be part of this exciting new venture but my Dad looking at her as if she was totally unqualified for the task (which she was, but this was rich coming from him as he’d never been to university or done any training in publishing or business). In my version of the story she was taken along to make the tea and answer the phone.
My Dad soon found out that publishing is one of the hardest ways to make a living and, after finding Alasdair Gray, he went off to drive trucks. This is how he explains it in the little book we did about her:
‘I disappeared to make some money and Stephanie took my place at Canongate… I thought that she would last a month and then Canongate would do a Titanic.
I could not have been more wrong. Her natural qualities, suppressed and degraded in a difficult marriage, blossomed. She took the mould, broke it, laughed like hell and built another into a far, far better shape.
“The girl done good,” I told Bob when next in touch.
“Why are you surprised?” he asked.
“Well…”
“You’re a fool,” he said. “You were handling gold and you didn’t notice.”’
Stephanie Wolfe Murray with Canongate Classics
Transforming Scottish Publishing
If my mother had applied for a job in Scottish publishing she wouldn’t have even got an interview. She was unqualified, lacked relevant experience and wasn’t very confident with highbrow people.
Publishing in Scotland in the 1970s was at a low ebb and there were hardly any jobs to be had. The era of small independent publishers had not yet arrived, most of the Scottish classics were out of print, the only operators were either sales branches of the big London outfits or makers of maps and dictionaries, there was no trade association and all roads led to London.
My mother had no idea about this state of play when she started out. She had no plan to transform Scottish publishing, no ambition to become the first chairwoman of the new trade association (the Scottish Publisher’s Association, now Publishing Scotland) and would have laughed at the suggestion that she was to become the “doyenne” (the most respected or prominent woman in a particular field) of Scottish publishing.
Perhaps it was her humility and lack of guile that led to her success. Certainly it was her positivity and enthusiasm. Whatever it was, she had a great impact.
‘She broke the mould in Scottish publishing,‘ wrote Michael Wigan, an author. ‘Her innovation, sheer go-and-get-it brio, just swept everyone away in her path. More than a breath of fresh air in rather staid Caledonian publishing, she was a whirlwind. Her charm turned scowling misogynist monosyllabic authors inside out, into grinning schoolboys.’
She was an inspiration to women and her former colleagues, and authors loved her.
Jenny Brown, the literary agent, said she was ‘a visionary editor in the days when Scottish publishers were few and far between, introducing new voices like those of Alasdair Gray, Jimmy Boyle, and Charles Palliser, publishing landmark volumes like Antonia Fraser’s Scottish Love Poems and republishing classics like Sunset Song.
An instinctive publisher with a keen eye for design. A passionate human with a strong sense of social responsibility and a gift for friendship. A woman with a sense of adventure who loved the hills. A single mother of four boys. Capable and scatty. Individual. Stylish. And beautiful. Overseas publishers regularly fell head over heels for her at book fairs.’
Another former colleague, Judy Moir, wrote this: ‘She inspired a generation of Scottish publishers and her generosity, dedication, creative flair, charisma and literary acumen were astonishing.’
The above quotes were taken from the book we did about my Mother, which is called Stephanie Wolfe Murray – A Life in Books. The book starts and finishes with touching little pieces by friends and families but the heart of the book, its intellectual substance, is about her publishing years. One of the most interesting pieces was by Tim Neat, the Fife-based author and filmmaker. Here is an extract from his 940 word contribution:
‘In the 1960’s Hamish Henderson wrote: “Scotland hates and fears its creative writers. Why is there here this conspiracy of the old against the young – which you get everywhere – but which with us is so blatantly tyrannical? It goes back to the fantastic theocratic tyranny of the 17th century and the attempt to divide the nation into a small, elect elite and the damned mass…” Stephanie helped put that old barbarism to bed.
‘And, in the world’s terms, how foolish she was! In my case, recognising and supporting my writing at a time when no one, at least anyone in authority, did.
‘We never ate a restaurant meal but, for fifteen years ran in harness together, and I remember Stephanie saying something that no one else has ever said (or would dream of saying!): “Tim, you are a man at the height of your powers, you must work – and I shall see your work published.”
‘She had a generosity of spirit, rare in our reductive times.’
Stephanie Wolfe Murray by Alasdair Gray
What I Took from Her
If I had to choose one word to sum up my Mother, to represent her many qualities, it would be the word OPEN.
Looking back over her life, her openness was what advertising people call ‘the red line’ running through all the stories and achievements: she was open to my Dad despite convention and her mother’s hysteria; she was open to living in the wilderness; she was open to us, her children, until the day she died; she was open to the challenge of publishing (and aid work) and was open to authors and anyone who wanted to work with her, or stay with us, however bizarre their appearance (Harry Horse, the illustrator and children’s book author, turned up dressed as Napoleon and was hired on the spot).
She had an open door, an open house and most importantly she had an open heart. Her ability to forgive was unbelievable. Being open isn’t easy. There are so many forces and circumstances that make its opposite – closing down, shutting off, being suspicious, negativity – seem like the easier option. Her openness was powered by an endless supply of positivity, optimism and faith in people.
I feel hugely privileged to have been brought up by such a woman, to have had this life-long lesson in being open to ideas, experiences, people and challenges. This has enabled me to live abroad, in poor and difficult countries, with a can-do attitude which has enabled me to overcome the most formidable challenges.
Her approach to life is best described by the author Michael Wigan:
‘It seemed never to occur to her that something was not do-able. She could get friends, bystanders, or anyone within range, to do anything. If Stephanie said go and rob the bank we need money for lunch, you would unthinkingly proceed with the instruction thinking how sensible.’
Stephanie Wolfe Murray was born at Blandford Forum on April 27th 1941. She died on the 24th of June 2017 and is buried at Traquair graveyard.
Rupert Wolfe Murray is a freelance writer, project manager and PR consultant. He blogs at www.wolfemurray.com.
We are delighted to host the full PDF below of Stephanie Wolfe Murray: A Life In Books, with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith. Click to view it in fullscreen mode.
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